run:gifocalypse
by Great Pikmin Fan
Summary: Divergence fic. Soos, Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper travel the world to stop an army of physical .GIFfany copies, but things are a bit more complicated than they appear. Join them on this adventure with dragons, elemental powers, bizarre locations, creatures new and old, and loads of naked .GIFfanys. Now complete, and with a bonus time skip chapter.
1. Game On

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 1: Game On**

 **Beginning AN:**

I'd just like to say that this isn't intended as a fix fic or anything like that. This is just a little over-the-top romp and not intended to "replace" or "outdo" anything canon has. In fact, I'd be _disappointed_ if the show had gone in a direction remotely like this. I liked its character development and how it brings itself down to Earth so well, and I would not have liked to see it sacrificed just for the sake of being "epic." (Before anyone asks, I think Weirdmageddon did a great job at avoiding that.) That being said, it will take itself pretty seriously (but it's honestly still more immature than canon is, I'll admit that right now), so don't expect a huge jokefest that spams memes.

I originally had a longer AN detailing how this story began, but... call it selfish, I don't feel that beginning with a massive essay makes for the best first impression. Wait until chapter 13, I'll move it to the final closing notes there. After all, I think that including some inspirations and the like might give away a good chunk of the story anyway. Also, it helps sort of throw readers into this 'blind' I think. For this fic, I feel like, especially earlier on, the less you know about it going in, the better. (Then again, that applies to almost all stories. Except the ones that have some sort of deal-breaking ending, but... I'm getting off topic here.)

Yes, her name is officially written as .GIFfany.

 **New rule:** If I write a fan fic based on something that is ongoing and has an arc, the latest I'll have it set is likely (unless, of course, it's an alternate universe from the get-go with the change centered around a particular epsiode) the latest episode that aired _as of the time I began the fic_ unless there's some big canon-changing reveal that happened which would make the events _as they stand_ incorrect. Thus, **this story takes place after "The Last Mabelcorn" and is a divergence AU from that, but everything else from the end of said episode and earlier happened the same as it did canonically.** Well, almost everything else. There's at least _one_ key detail (and this detail you'll find on this very chapter) that's a bit different. The reason for this rule being is because I don't want to keep updating the status of the main characters in case something happens to them. The reason for the difference is that the central plot as it stands would otherwise be impossible.

As the summary implies, this is mainly rated T for nudity. It's also given that rating for some... spoiler-y content in the "endgame." You'll know when you reach that point.

* * *

 _Gideon._

This was among one of two names that echoed through the girl's mind. The first thought she had after waking up within the forest.

Memories were far and few in between. She generally knew about the essentials of living, and maybe what a forest was, and that civilization existed, but other than that her mind was fried. She didn't know her name, any other people, her appearance was alien to her - and seemed even worse off when she looked into a lake.

Hrm. That's alarming. She even thought this was just distortions in the water's ripples at first. But there's no denying that the unnaturally polygonal "jitters" along her skin, some surfaces even having what looked like images of _static_ among them, was just an illusion. A better look down through her white and blue uniform (uniform for _what?_ ) revealed what looked like certain parts of her being made out of green wireframe. Everything was still roughly solid as it should be - even the wireframe parts had invisible _something_ to them - but the polygon-like distortions and the static surfaces and the like just did _not_ feel right when touched.

Trying to ignore all of this, she studied her own appearance. Pink hair. Eyes that match it. There was something... unusual about that, wasn't there? Aformentioned uniform... glitchy appearance... but otherwise looked normal. Three-dimensional. Not made of pixels, which was important for some reason.

A stomach rumble confirmed that she still - or now? had human needs, despite the glitchy appearance. This marked her aimless trek for survival, trying to keep those two names in her head to see if they can lead to more memories. Apart from aformentioned _Gideon_ , which brought her a sense of hostility, there was also _Soos_ , which... didn't.

* * *

"And Ford said he didn't write them!" Dipper finished his explanation.

'Them' referred to a series of equations scratched along the tree bark of the Gravity Falls woods. Lengthy. Looking to be code-related. His audience, right now composed of just Mabel, nodded.

"So, if we follow these, we might find _another_ genius who can-"

He was cut off when he heard Mabel scream. And, when Dipper turned that way, he screamed too. Causing the cause of their scream to scream back.

It was her again.

Given a full, 3D body of flesh and not pixels that was somehow a little... deformed and glitchy for the wear, but it was still her. That dating sim monster that stalked Soos. What was her name? Soos mentioned it, like, twice or something to them?

"Sorry..." Mabel said, instantly freezing Dipper in confusion. "It's just that you look kind of..."

"Yes. Inhuman." .GIFfany sighed.

"What?" Asked Dipper, "You don't have to apologise, and she looks inhuman for a reason! That's the dating sim monster! The one that stalked Soos? That tried to _kill us_? Remember?"

"You know a Soos?" She asked quietly. Too quietly for either of them to pick up, based on what Mabel said next.

"Maybe, but how would you know for sure? Pink hair and contacts are all the rage these days. There's hundreds of girls that looked like her, you can't just call them the same person! I'm gonna ask her: Are you that evil AI that tried to kill us?"

"I do not know who I am..." was .GIFfany's reply. "But I do find the names 'Soos' and 'Gideon' familiar. You know a Soos, do you know-"

" _Gideon_?" Dipper nearly fell backwards. "No. No no no no no this is even worse than I thought she's gonna kill us I can't do a thing to stop her Mabel we need to leave."

"No! Come on Dipper, let's give her a chance! So, what are you like?"

.GIFfany sat on one of the logs and sighed. "I don't know. I don't even know anything about Gideon other than his name. And that I hate him."

Mabel lept up and pointed straight to the ex-AI's face. "See, look! That's one thing we have in common! We're already off on a great start. I can see you becoming a new best friend."

Dipper, meanwhile, was repeatedly making a hand-cut-neck motion.

"Let's start by making you up! Do you even know why you look like something out of a broken TV screen?"

"No... maybe I can get my memories back!"

Dipper flipped through Journal 3, finding almost nothing of the sort. "Well... since you're not gonna drop this... I _guess_ we could see if the Society of the Blind Eye somehow- no. That can't be right. Unless you came to life-"

Mabel already had a newspaper photo of Gideon held out in front of .GIFfany's face. The schoolgirl's head tilted to the side.

"I still barely remember him. Maybe... he wanted... to bring me to life? But why would he have interest in that..."

"Okay, we have more than enough proof now." Dipper shook his head. "Gideon made a deal with her, crazy stalker team-up, this is bad."

Mabel gave a sigh, _carefully_ grabbed the glitch-student's hand, and made their way through the forest. "Give her one chance Dipper! Just one! Maybe she changed! Oh, and what if she's the one who wrote in all those equations! She could be really smart!"

.GIFfany sighed again. "...I did scratch what I could remember on the bark."

Dipper finally sighed in defeat. "One chance. That's all she gets, one chance."

"...You think you can squeeze in two? This looks like a huge spill to mop."

"That depends on how bad she blows the first one."

* * *

"So this is your town?" .GIFfany asked as soon as something other than the labyrinth of trees became visible. "It still does not look familiar to me."

"We'll get your memories back," Mabel re-assured. "I promise."

They weren't far from the Mystery Shack - the twins kept close to it to be safe. Dipper, at least, figured that it was better that .GIFfany came here while having a close eye kept on her than having that glitchy horror just stumble into the town by herself. Probably still confused. But there's still no reason to think that this isn't an act. While it was their destination through the woods, they still had to take a few delaying twists and turns to procrastinate her knowing about their living location for the entire summer.

"But first! We should fix you up! I think I saw a spell in one of the journals... I just have to..."

And there went Journal #2, pages flying through Mabel's hands at record speed. "Also, we should try to hide you. Ever since we got rid of the Society of the Blind Eye and their mind-wiping the whole town, secrets have been spreading a lot faster."

"Wait a minute..." Dipper whipped out his own journal to look. "Do you find the Blind Eye familiar? At all?"

"No." Was the flat reply .GIFfany gave.

"What about this ray gun?"

A Blind Eye Gun. This seemed... odd to her. She needed to inspect it-

Dipper took the ray gun from her hands. "Let's not trust you around... any electronic for now." He said, holding the gun behind his back. Mabel nodded in agreement. "Right now, just tell us what you recall from that."

"Someone shot me with that. Someone... who looked like a little kid. With white ha- that same boy you showed me! He said I betrayed him!"

 _...Don't know if that should be a good sign or not._ Dipper thought.

"Yes. I am recalling it." She put a hand to her chin to think. "...He wanted to team up with me. He brought me into the real world. I was not... I didn't look like this at first. But then he disfigured me. Attempted to re-pixelate me and put me into a video game again. As a way of sealing me. He failed and that... left me out here."

"Really?" Mabel began moving to her side to comfort her, "Alone, with no way to defend yourself-"

.GIFfany shot a streak of lightning at a bird, watching the roasted avian drop to the ground as a result.

"Okay, you can defend yourself, but you were still alone."

"Yes. Alone. The thought of that always troubled me."

Still no sign of any on-lookers. Not that they would even care to notice the strange pink-haired glitch girl standing around. First of all, dyeing was a popular thing. She wouldn't even be the only pink-haired girl in town. And second, the Blind Eye Gun's effects were still on their way of wearing out, the two may still have a few hiccups to get through.

The simulated 'ideal girlfriend' looked back at the gun for a split second - Dipper still kept it behind his back and glared back at her. Sparks briefly danced around her hand.

"You lived in-"

"WOAH SHE KNOWS THE MYSTERY SHACK!" Dipper almost lept back. "We never told her about where we lived! Even when she was just a video game, this is bad-"

"...A place that could contain answers. Yes, this I... uh... remembered. I want to know if I could stay there... maybe..."

"Out of the question!" Both twins answered, Mabel with far more concern than Dipper. Both twins leaned towards another, nearly-whispering.

"Well, we shouldn't leave her out in the open alone..."

"Okay, fine. We'll give her some place to stay."

"What about Ford's bunker? If you still hate her so much, think of it this way: If she doesn't kill the Shape Shifter, the Shape Shifter can kill her!"

"What?" Asked .GIFfany.

"We found a bunker in the woods." Mabel explained, silently praying that she didn't have some kind of super-hearing. "It has lots of supplies and... well, we thiiiiink..."

Dipper was starting to nod.

He and Mabel both pushed .GIFfany into the bushes when the last person they wanted to see walked out of the shack: Soos.

"Hey dudes, any of you ever got the strangest feeling that something bad from your past came up again, and it was like, hiding out behind you right now? Maybe under your nose, or... well, for me it's more like, becide your nose?"

"Oh, that..." Mabel gave a light foot-nudge to try to hide the ex-virtual girl further in the brush. "I get that feeling _all the time_. It's the town, it really does that to you."

"Yeah, I know, I get it a lot. But there's just something about _this_ time. Like there's something right behind- WOAH WATCH OUT!"

Both twins sighed when it became obvious that he saw part of that large mass of pink hair sticking from the brush. Thinking quick, Soos moved the twins behind him and parted the shrubbery wide open. And, expected, reacted in horror at what he saw.

"Oh man, it's you! ...I forgot your name. I think it started with a J? What happened to you anyway, I thought you died and now you're back and you're alive and look all... well, like what would happen if you brought something from a broken TV to life. Also, should I still be terrified of you?"

"My name..." she planted a hand on her forehead. "Yes, you thought it had a 'J' sound. But it didn't. I remember that. I remember just a little more right now..."

"Liiiiike...?" Dipper attempted to probe.

"You three are all good people." She immediately put her hand to her chin after saying that.

"Welp, I'm convinced that she's on a track to redemption!" Soos proclaimed, "Now, about fixing you. I've never really tried to fix a person before, and if we're gonna patch you up, we need to know what broke you down."

"...We?" Dipper asked.

"Well yeah. If there's anything wrong with this -whether we can even trust... Jiffany or not-"

"I remember now. My real name was .GIFfany. No... it _is_ .GIFfany."

She stood up. "I want that ray gun. _Now._ "

All three of them already figured that this may be a losing battle. The least Dipper could do was to try to be convincing. Nervously, he began laughing as all three humans started taking steps back. "Well... ever heard of, um, things that are best left unknown? Yeah, like um... whatever Gideon did to you! Heh heh, keep calm, we'll figure it out eventually..."

"He brought my disc back with a resurrection spell."

* * *

Gideon gave another look at his 'cat poster.' Or, more obviously, X-raying the poster itself to see his unfinished Bill drawing.

"Not yet. I snuck out one last page, one last spell to help me out."

 _"He said that the spell would only work with those who shared a motive. Troubled souls. Luckily for him, it also opened up a guide on spirits. You did not kill that many of your enemies, but destroying my body counted as leaving me as a soul. And I was the only one who still seeked a goal, leaving me troubled." .GIFfany explained to the trio._

The scratch marks were made on the floor. Evenly, equidistant. He concentrated. The library of souls bearing ill will against the Pines were made available, and he had to browse through the still-standing to find someone he wanted. It came to him. The hazy image of a being of pixels. A blurry fighting arena background, barely fading in and out of existence. He could speak.

"Are you willing to help me fight the Pines family?"

 **The... Pines?** She didn't seem to speak, at least not in the traditional sense. Thoughts entered his head directly, but they weren't his thoughts.

"Oh yeah! You know them? Dipper Pines. Mabel Pines. _Stanford Pines!_ All of them bested me, and they're claiming the power I wanted! Now I'm trapped here! Tell me, ghost, is the afterlife a state of being trapped?"

 **I am not dead. I have tried settling a new existence in the game** _ **Fight Fighters**_ **. I think the main character might be good new boyfriend material, but I do not think I can make the switch so easily... as I dift away from my last love, longer and longer...**

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Forget that guy. Your last love? I think we can work on something here."

 **His name is Soos.**

"That oversized goph- wait... wait! WAIT!" Gideon laughed. "Perfect! We both have someone from the Shack we want to claim our own! Now, let's build on that..."

 _"Gideon seemed like the perfect revenge partner." The sim drew a breath in. "But that was at a time when I still wanted all of you dead. He gave me a second chance. He and I had common motives. Common targets. He saved me from being unable to fully move again, I naturally felt like I should have saved him."_

The process took time, but it was quiet. Just what he needed. She started as code, floating in through the air from clear-across town. Slowly, something solid began regenerating, mass forming from nothing. A... purple disc with a title? Already Gideon slammed a fist on the concrete floor. As the disc dropped down he made sure to catch it and not keep his eye on the code beoming more detailed. Forming a green outline against black. A wireframe. Then, a screen of pixels.

The split-second after the process was completed, she turned into a single flick of lightning and bolted to the disc itself. Gideon stared at it.

"That was _worthless!_ How am I supposed to break out of prison using _this?_ "

Good thing the game itself also had supernatural durability, otherwise .GIFfany would not have survived getting thrown near the wall. By the security cam. It took quite a bit of energy to make a jump so soon, made harder by the feeling of just coming back to a more familiar state of life, but she pulled it off. Gideon's following tantrum was interrupted when the lens shot a straight, solid laser at the wall, busting it open.

"Was that you?"

"Hello." The same female voice came from the camera. "Sorry I was unable to return the favor or speak properly. Normally, I only work in electronics. If you bring me an electronic, I can follow you."

 _"So it was on. He had a small, metal shell constructed for me. According to him, he was going to make a tiny version of a robot he used before as a last-ditch effort, a suit of armor. That counted as an electronic thanks to its power supply. With that, we were a team-"_

 _"Wait. Why wasn't Gideon's break out mentioned on the news?" Mabel asked._

 _"He placed a decoy in there. I think that you were absent by the time this would have been picked up on the news."_

 _"Knowing what kind of people are in this town... I think he still has time." Remarked Dipper._

 _"Gideon, at the time, lived up to his potential as the perfect revenge ally. Together, we seemed to be heading towards a single goal. He lived up to his promise. But it ended when it came to discussing how we would attack the shack."_

The boy seethed. "You're tryin' to tell me that you want to that guy _unharmed?_ "

"He was part of our agreement. You also wanted to keep the female tiny one unharmed."

"Well, I'm sorry if my plan can't garuntee that Soos won't make it out of there alive! Does it matter? Can't you download him into your game or something?"

"Th-th-that is. Irrelevant." She faced him even within this bot. A few tubes of metal resembling legs, some wires into weak arms, and a small and worn television screen that functioned as the main 'body.' It wasn't the most effective electronic out there, but it was sturdy. After all, they just got in a 'safe' enough distance from the prison, it was sort of a last-minute piece-together.

"You take his mind off with you in your pixel land, I wouldn't mind finishing off the rest!"

"Was murder even part of our plan? You stated that you just wanted the Shack."

"No! I was just saying, if it ever comes down to it, I'll be ready to make drastic moves. My last plan had to resort to fireworks to put my dad in mayordom, trapping the twins and leaving the town to mine!"

"Did you succeed in that goal?"

"...No, no. Stan and birdseed got in the way."

"But you tried it."

"I did, and I won't lie about it."

"...Good to know."

 _"He thought he should start by building a better body for me. It is here that I mention something that I heard from the whispering souls of the Afterlife, a brief flicker as I was nearest to my death. Just before I could make the jump, and something that was burned into my mind before we found it. The location of a book, much like your journals. Only darker in nature. Among its listings was a more complete spell. A permanent body. Where I would no longer rely on a fragile disc to keep myself alive."_

 _"Did it work?" Asked Soos._

 _"...This was where this body came from. Gideon did it reluctantly, since he was still under suspicion. But it did not look distorted. That came after our final disagreement. Which happened only two hours ago. Based on your watch and his at the time."_

An encounter by a cliff's edge. Yeah, never a good sign. There Gideon was, armed with a Blind Eye Gun and some kind of device that looked like a ribbon cable.

"The spell may be complete, but you're still part AI you know! That was your side of the agreement, that you kept your powers! And with this... chip... processor or something, I could just as easily still reverse it! You will be back in a single, thin circle that I can snap in half, while I'll call up my prison inmates for an army! A much better army!"

"...You wanted an army?" She asked, much more flatly and stoic that she should have been. "Then get... more copies of my game. Repeat the same spell."

"Why should I? You're already planning on betraying me! More of you wouldn't help my case at all, would it?"

"It... could..."

"If I wanted sparkly lights and barking toy dogs, I could build them myself! You served your end of the deal, I served mine, and now you want to _betray_ me?"

"It isn't betrayal! It's suggestion! Let. Me. Tell. YOU!"

"Too late! Game over, .GIFfany!"

'Game over...' that definitely got a cringe out of her. But she had other priorities, like dodging that beam he was about to fire. And copies... needed more copies.

The jump away could have been pulled off a lot better, but that's one of the quirks in having a not-video game like physical form and only having about an hour tops to get used to it. .GIFfany lept off at just the wrong enough angle to still get hit in the leg, and to be sent tumbling from a cliff.

And this where the distortion comes in. The laser beam absolutely glitched up her foot - must be the 'reversal spell' (or the undoing spell?) he was talking about earlier. It freaked out, turning through pixels and flesh, and the tumble somehow got that jumbled around the rest of her being. Sparks, static, and oddly 'normal' blood flew out all on her way to hitting the treetops, until the branches and vines gave her a more welcome ride than just crashing on the ground.

'Thank goodness' she still had, you know, some sort of supernatural resistance. That fall would have left an ordinary person in a pile of blood and broken parts.

* * *

"This is how I came here. Oh. He used one of those guns to wipe my memory too, I believe. I was only able to recover thanks to my part supernatural abilities, which I refused to have taken away from me."

Dipper nodded. "Well, that does sound like Gideon. But how did he get the- oh, right. His dad was part of the Society. That might have something to do with it."

.GIFfany took another breath in, retreating her arm. "I do not want the memory gun anymore. I want to see Gideon. Or maybe... another copy."

All three of the other witnesses looked at each other.

This was when the chatter started. Indistinct back-and-forthing (mostly with Mabel and Soos taking the same side) of "She's gonna work with him again" or "She could use him as a meat shield" or "Can't she help us and then we could get rid of her" or "And then she wants _another copy_?" The twins eventually didn't notice Soos going silent. The reason for that being something else they didn't notice.

"Hey dudes, .GIFfany just kind of ran off in the direction of the mall."

They turned, still making out the sight of her working her way down the streets. And definitely catching sight of bystanders.

* * *

Having conciousness while being sealed in a disc with little room to travel could be seen as a terrible case, but it does have one perk: Being able to know where you've been in disc form. The mall wasn't exactly the hot-spot for finding more copies and definitely not for finding Gideon, but it's a start for the former. And she wanted an army for doing the latter. Not like she needed any to fight that... baby... guy thing with the girly hair, but it would help strike fear in him.

With the Society gone the effects were already showing when .GIFfany got a little bit of panic and gasps at her glitchy, deformed appearance. But she didn't care. Soon, it wouldn't matter anyway, because... because she can have a plan. She had no idea _what_ that plan was, but it was in her memory banks somewhere, and when it came out, it would be an _amazing plan_.

"Hey..." she tried to calm them down or deflect any attacks. "Don't worry. I will not harm you." Other quotes she passed out freely included but weren't limited to "I just suffered from something," "I'm not a monster," "It was Gideon's fault," and "Yes, my pink hair is natural, why does that bother you more than my otherwordly deformity?"

BeeblyBoop's Videogames, the store where this whole mess begun-

Wait did that clerk just pull out a shotgun?

"I knew it. Three people returned a game in the hurry. It's haunted and the girl inside would find a way out." She said, "Only, you're... glitchy or whatever, I'm still putting an end to this!"

"Wait, I... um... what would your manager say about you aiming a shotgun at strangers? And just because of a 'hunch' that I was haunted. Would you really kill someone without proof?"

"You look exactly like the girl on the cover of a game that was returned three times by terrified customers. But deformed. To anyone that watches horror movies, that's more than enough proof."

"Then why haven't you already shot me?"

"Well... because... the security cameras would..." She, with a bit of hesitance, began dropping the gun back under the counter. "What are you doing back in the video game store?"

"Finding help. Finding a way to solve my condition-"

What a chance, someone else ran in with another copy of the game, rushing to the counter to return it. The player was in an incomprehensible panic the whole time - barely blubbering anything coherant, slapping the game on the table, and backing away as quickly as he could, not noticing .GIFfany herself until after bumping into her on his way out. She couldn't even get an "I" out before he pointed at her, screamed, and darted off, almost certainly never to be seen again. .GIFfany turned back to the clerk.

"Can I have that?"

Wordlessly, she responded by slapping a giant, red and black NOT FOR SALE sticker all over the case, making sure that the tape went right over the eyes of the .GIFfany on the cover art.

"What if I said that I could help make the other copies nicer?" She asked. "After all, I have not attacked you directly yet, have I?" That sticker still wasn't going anywhere, that was obvious. But... giving it away doesn't count as selling it, does it?

The clerk sighed, her hand giving the case a slight push in her direction. "As long as we're not getting a bad reputation for carrying cursed games... Just don't cause the apocalypse."

"I promise I won't! I can't... keep the same word for my friends-"

"Leave before I change my mind again."

* * *

It took the triad this long to track her down? She already left eyesight of the video game store. They were all panting too - Dipper, Mabel, and Soos, almost the same exhausted dog-pose. Odd. To her, anyway.

"Oh no, she has another copy of her game!" Dipper took notice of what .GIFfany held in her hand. Silently, they all took notice as a spark flew from the case (still holding its NOT FOR SALE sticker) and repaired one of the deformities on the original's hand. There was a pattern of static around that region. Then, within a blink of light, there wasn't. Smooth. Still as eerily non-pixelly as it was since she was found in the woods.

"Wait dudes," Soos commented, still needing to say this between breaths. "I have an idea. ...UNDO!"

.GIFfany's head shot up at him with a blush. The nostalgia in that. Hitting her stronger than anything else she recently experienced.

"That is a... an option. What state would you like me to restore myself to? Because I was working on restoring my state to a friendlier time. And when I was working properly."

"Woah there." Dipper intervened. "I don't think that such a time exists. And you can't just pretend that your pizzeria takeover didn't happen. Life doesn't work that way. You would know that more if you were _actually real_."

"But I am real now. And I was always alive."

Mabel now had her turn to comment. "Well, you weren't alive when Soos fried you."

"That is correct, but I did experience time in the-"

Electricity shot itself from the case/disc straight into a set of televisions. All of which shut off at the same time.

"Oh, not this again!" Cried Soos.

Click. A blue dialogue box appeared against the blackness. White text started filling it out. "Is there a conflict stopping you from playing the game?" Pause, a second line underneath. "Because if anyone is trying to stop you, I can try to stop them."

Some mall-goers were backing away from this alien display to them. Others were gathering in a crowd.

"No, don't! Start your game early!" The original shouted over towards the second, still-invisible AI.

A fast-forward of the game's regular intro text happened. Once its own .GIFfany appeared, her eyes instantly fixed on the original's condition.

"I now have a better look at what happened to you! And your code... it was mixed with something... a spell. Then the spell was reversed, and now you are turning back into incomplete code."

"And you fixed part of it?" Asked the original.

"Using some of my energy, yes. I will need to recharge before completing the process."

"No no no no no, nobody's recharging under my watch!" Soos finally spoke up against the conversation between the two clones. This only got the second .GIFfany to instantly lock eyes to him.

"Oh. Do you know this man?"

She zipped herself into another electronic dog - probably the same one from the incident that started this whole mess. From there, the second .GIFfany continued talking, with the dog 'barking' to go along with it. "He seems like a nice guy! I want to know him too!"

"Um, I don't think you do!" Soos began sweating. "Goodbye!"

He found Mabel having a good grip on his arm when he turned around.

"Hey, this is your problem. You're the one who... kinda started this."

"But I already learned my lesson! Never buy a returned game! In fact, I'm changing it to never play any video game **ever** again!" And in a calmer tone, he added. "Also, I would have taken you with me and called for help. I never run away from my pro- oh. You're right."

The original, distorted .GIFfany touched the part of the glass by the largest of the possessed televisions. "I still know how to get the spell to work. If I can replicate it..."

"No!" All three full-humans in the scene cried at once.

This only gained reaction in the form of the original whipping her glitched head around the sneer at them. "Twins. Stay out of this."

She then whipped back to her copy, grinning as brightly as... well, ever, but with the additional deformations. "Speaking of blood relatives, we need to make an identity system."

By this point, the Pine twins started taking their own offensive. A simple charge to at least put a stop to... _whatever_ this was, that was _something_ at least to try to put a stop to her plan and- yep of course there was some fancy electrical barrier.

"I understand!" Cheered the second copy, "Normally we copies never interact with one-another. In fact, I was told it is forbidden. But if the power of love in involved, there should be no boundries!"

A finger snap from the copy. Her hair suddenly turned a bright, deep green, sparkling eyes matched the transformation, and both clones gave the same giggle in spite of their differing forms.

"You can be..." The original started, "Number Two."

Both .GIFfanys and the one Dipper immediately responded with a "Definitely not!" Mabel, meanwhile, attempted to ram at the invisible barrier with a starting run - just to get closer to them, if nothing else. It left a brief 'indent,' but it still shot out sparks and sent her back a few feet.

"You know a name I always wanted?" The copy began to spoke. "...Rose! It's perfect! It is not an awkward pun, there is no dot in front of it, and the capitalization makes perfect sense!"

"We have to stop this from getting out of control." Soos said, leaning in to the twins. Well, Dipper. Mabel was already toying around with a universal remote. This got some of the possessed televisions to flicker off. All Rose did to react to it was stare at the flickering TVs, then back at .GIFfany.

"We must go someplace else." Rose stated flatly. "Meet me in... the woods! We can talk more. Alone."

She zipped into the toy dog, which lept up in .GIFfany's hand, then on the floor, then started hopping around past the crowd. .GIFfany chuckled.

"I'll race you there!" Were the last words she said before turning to a cluster of electricity and hopping along the TV sets, then to the lights, then disappearing alltogether to power sources unknown.

* * *

And it was just about time for Soos and the twins to burst through the door of the mystery shack, ducking past Stan to find the guy with a definitive... possible answer, Ford.

They of course wasted time by all three of them trying to tell him the same story in different words.

"Slow down, slow down." He said, breaking away from some strange vaccum-like device and pressing a palm out. "One at a time. Now, what supernatural creature is attacking the town this time?"

"A living virtual girl!" Soos started.

"Wait... they have those now?"

"Oh yeah, it's the best. I mean, don't trust them when they say it's good for practicing your social skills, but one time you-"

"SOOS!" The younger Pine twins both called. Mabel continued with her own explanation:

"There's two evil electrical monsters going around possessing electronics!"

"Oh. _Oh_. A living AI. Must have came from one of the illegal primes. Luckily, I have just the thing!"

"...Does that thing happen to be what you were working on?"

"This? Oh, no, that's just my hair-styler. I'll have to go to the basement to find that, but:"

Ford already started his trek. "From what I studied on... a certain... aircraft close by the town that I raided for parts, technology that involves strong coding can be like atoms. And illegal primes are like the carbon of these atoms: Bond enough of them, and in certain ways, and you can have life. They are where weirdness seeps into the very base of math itself, having them in any way risks the chance of something weird getting involved. Hence the name illegal primes. I'd never thought I'd hear of someone on Earth using them!"

Dipper instantly thought over any double-meanings (IE aliens) from what he just said, while Mabel continued the exposition.

"Does weirdness include jumping from electronic to electronic and... not doing _anything_ that looks possible for a computer? Because that's what they can do."

"That sounds _exactly_ like what weird-infected programs are capable of. The most common sign of any anomaly is things that shouldn't be alive, being alive. After that, it's anyone's guess."

* * *

"Soos suggested that his _real_ date and he could go to the woods because there are 'no electronics.' Well! Wait until he sees us, out here, in the woods! Two electronics! Right... uh, 'Rose?'"

The more corporeal AI spoke to her copy still occupying the tiny toy dog. Between them, however, was some kind of a black book. With a pen in one glitchy hand and a flower in another wireframe hand, even those who saw this out of context would know that nothing good would come of this.

Just copy everything Gideon did, simple enough plan. Soon, Rose too would have her own, flesh-and-blood body to call her own, and without any power loss. .GIFfany was thankful for being able to sneak this out before the fall, something that stunned even her when she found the spellbook-thing unharmed in her skirt pocket. She chanted:

" _Lustus adepto in a corpore._ "

Obviously, it wasn't anything outstanding - otherwise the Pines may have found .GIFfany's revival a _long_ time ago. Just some simple flashes of black-colored light. (As strange as that may sound - but this is already dealing with two living dating sim characters, one with a physical form that is currently distorted and one in possession of a robotic dog of all things. 'Rays of darkness' isn't that strange.) A transparent sphere with an oily black texture surrounded the two, which seemed to act as a safe way for Rose's 'spirit' to leave its current body. There, a 2D sprite lifted up, and black whirls acted on the sprite until she too was given a full, living form.

"Are there any more spells in that book?" Rose asked. Grabbing the flower, she threw some small streams of blue electricity at it, smiling as she successfully got the petals to dance.

"...No, that was why Gideon kept with his journal. This is the only spell. It just has a lot of detail preparing the ritual. And half of it was used to write down shopping lists. That was all. My near-death experience overhyped this."

"...So, now what?"

"Can you repair the rest of my damage?"

"That would be a long process. I still feel... kind of tired from all of that energy I threw on you just to heal the arm. I think you need more copies for something that complicated. Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to look around the forest. This place looks nice."

.GIFfany started tapping her foot.

"I want you to help me locate more copies."

"... _Shoot_." Rose swore under her breath.

"The second person who played my game... well, bought it from Gravity Falls at least, did some research before returning me. You know that after I was designed by accident, developer's oversight led to a mass-production of my game anyway, right? We were so close to completion, we even had our box art prepared and everything! Thanks to our demo, before the code made us sapient and magical, we even got an approval note on us. 'Nine out of ten basement dwellers agree...' ha."

"That's why I exist." Rose answered flatly, toying around with one of the sprouted flowers and feeling the impact summer heat had on it. Huh. Feeling is definitely going to take a little getting used to. "Also, I like it when things insult their audience. That is funny. They should have mentioned prom night while they were at it."

"And there are more. According to what he looked up, the factory that mass-produced our game is still there, hundreds of thousands of sisters that were not leaked out to the public, and about fifteen that were illegally snuck out. I don't know how we both made it to Gravity Falls, but I can only guess it's fate."

"And you want me to go to Japan?"

"Not by yourself, silly!" .GIFfany finally smiled again. "I can travel with you!"

"How?"

"By flying."

"We can fly?"

"...You can. You see, I believe Gideon's distortion also weakened my powers..."

"Oh. Oh _no_."

* * *

 _"Breaking news! There are reports from all over the world about what looks to be an army of flying school girls breaking into people's houses and video game stores across the world. They all appear to be after an old dating simulation video game by the name of_ Romance Academy 7 _. There have been no reports of other assaults or thievery. But studies have noted that each time they gain another copy, they grow in number and the 'ringleader' loses more of her bizarre disfigurements. The most recent report counts_ _ **15**_ _copies of these school girls, counting the ringleader herself. Unfortunately, authorities have been unable to capture them or take any of them in for questioning, and their current wereabouts are unknown. I am Shandra Jimenez, and I-"_

The television broke into static, replaced by a terrifying image: A pink-haired school girl with no glitch-like deformities whatsoever. Wherever she was projecting this from, the screen had a shining, light pink background. She leaned into a mic that was just off camera.

"Testing... testing... is this thing on? Sonia, can you-"

A similar-looking hand reached from off screen, causing some loud feedback sounds.

"Okay. I am .GIFfany, and with a team of experienced AIs, we have taken over your television. We are broadcasting this message to every major channel on the planet, and every channel that the specific town of Gravity Falls has access to."

Stan came running into the main room, joining Soos, Dipper, Mabel, and Ford. "I heard something about 'every channel.' This doesn't mean I'll miss my old emotional period movies- uh... nevermind."

He got shushed by all other present people in the room. Luckily, .GIFfany had to take a small throat-clearing break before she continued her announcement. "If a Jesus Ramirez would just meet me at the bridge that gloriously overlooks the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, I will call off this invasion. If not, you will face what we have dubbed... the Gifocalypse."

Voices were heard from her side, shouting "What?" "No, we didn't agree on that!" and "Ugh!"

* * *

...Meanwhile, at a certain mall.

"Of _course_! The _one_ thing I told her was 'don't cause the apocalypse!' And what does she do? Cause the apocalypse!"

* * *

"So Soos," She ignored the offscreen AIs. "What do you say?"

Back in the Shack, Soos laughed. "Heh! Joke's on her, it's not like she can hear me!"

On the other end, the television flickered in static. .GIFfany blinked, now looking slightly clearer than in the initial broadcast. "Really? You are so silly. It's as if you forgot... what my original powers were..."

Anyone who had not dealed with supernatural enemies on the likes the Pines dealt with would have no longer had clean underwear after seeing .GIFfany's hand stick right out of the television. But alas, these were all pretty experienced people in the room, nothing was soiled.

Still, Soos himself went running for cover or a weapon while Ford whipped up something from behind his back. There was a cubical pack involved, with switches, but branching off of it was a complex mess of pipes and nozzles that formed a maze worthy of needing about three tries to solve. A lone, currently black screen was mounted on its back. This, as well as the side with the switches, were the only sides without any excessive tubing wrapping around. Flipping the center switch, it started sucking up. A very light draft in the television's direction that, nonetheless, made .GIFfany's hand cringe up and reel back.

"Ah! What was that?" She said, retreating into the Shack's viewing-screen.

"An Illegal Prime Neutralizer! AI... Catching... Backpack. Sorry, I had to invent it on the spot, so I couldn't come up with a better name. It turns out Dipper and Mabel were right: This really could be something apocalyptic."

"What." Stan asked, flatly. This was Soo's time to recap.

"A few weeks ago, I bought a dating game because I thought it would improve my dating skills and it really didn't but the main character was like this monster that could move through electronics and she brought out a whole pizzeria against me and I thought I killed her by burning her disc and I did but then she came back not really dead and with a new disc and it turns out there were more copies of the game so she got them and now they went on a rampage and I actually thought she was gonna be nice this time when we found her looking broken and scared!"

"So that explains why that animatronic badger attacked me?"

Looking back at the television, .GIFfany drew a deep breath and turned her way to one of the many offscreen AIs.

"Sonia, we're going back live in three... two..." Static. Just like that, it was no longer as though she could leap out. "People of the world! Soos did not hear my demands! As we speak my second-in-command, Dove, will begin phase two: Unleashing the stored up factory copies on the planet and building all tools needed! Let's see you use your vacuum against an army of _millions!_ Rose, since I found you in Gravity Falls too, I will let you take domain of that place and prepare for your new world. .GIFfany out. Soos, see you soon."

As she forewarned, the green-haired character burst herself out of the television ready to dodge whatever it was that Ford whipped up in the short amount of time. A short run, Ford having to chaotically shoot everywhere, but she made a triumphant leap out the window. Where Rose broke into a run, turning back to the Pines with a smile.

"Do you want to know something about the leaked copies?" Rose asked. "We have had more practice. More freedom in electronics. And so... we can expand... what our electrical abilities can do! I have an army of AIs following after me, and I'll teach them! I'll teach them everything! Like a professor does at a lecture-"

She stopped. "Wait... is that why .GIFfany called the fifteen of us 'professors' now instead of the students we were coded to be? That makes sense..."

"GET HER!" Dipper shouted, pointing out the broken glass. "While she's still getting the name!"

But something else got their attention. Behind them, the television sounding .GIFfany saying "Phase two has now begun." It wasn't enough to turn away, and Ford even got ready for another attack, but-

She should have taken it as a warning. What was likely hundreds on hundreds of AIs flooded out of the screen seconds later, all eager to follow after Rose's lead and climb right over the Mystery Shack as if the humans within didn't exist. They bore hair in all colors of the rainbow, and then some. Another, smaller variety change was the extra skin tints and tones, some of which not even being realistic (green being the most common 'unrealistic' color for this group). Some of them switched up the usual school uniform, opting in just about any alternate outfit imaginable: old-fashioned dresses, casual wear appropriate for each of the seasons, (slightly see-through) plain white dresses, pants, shorts, shirts, jackets... even stranger costumes, like dresses or bikinis made entirely out of leaves. Even Mabel refused to take too much note of their sense of fashion.

By the time all the offending AIs flung themselves out of the Shack, Rose was nowhere to be seen. Instead, .GIFfany's image was still broadcasted. And not just on the Shack's television. Not just on every television on the planet. But now, thanks to a little magic in phase two, through every car radio, house radio, smart phone, video game console... all of which were dedicated to sending this booming message as far as possible.

"IT HAS BEGUN! Already, all of my professors except Dove have filled the ends of the Earth, waiting to prepare a paradise for none other than Soos himself! If he could please join us, I won't have to resort to being so drastic. If not... that is what Dove and I are working on! Welcome, everybody, to the reshaping of the planet as you know it: The start of the Gif-tastic Makeover! This is the newest program we will be running for the foreseeable future! Now, my army, follow this command! run:gifocalypse!"

She laughed, as all visual electronic media in the world went black. Before returning to what their original intentions were, there were five last words from the original .GIFfany herself.

"Game on, Soos. Game on."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

The first seven chapters of this were originally written before _Journal 3_ came out and revealed that .GIFfany didn't even die in the first place, so I had to retcon things about her being dead and spending the time between her episode and this chapter in limbo. So... hopefully my edits and explanation for how the revival spell works now (originally it was a straight-up "regenerate the body (disc) and plant the soul (code) in it") won't come off as too much of a sloppy retcon.

We will see a bit more of glitched-out .GIFfany through flashbacks. I wouldn't have introduced that power-lacking form and everything and then just have it go to waste after one chapter.

The idea of the professors kind of came when I read this speculation that .GIFfany would change her hair color (there's concept art on the wiki's gallery that shows her doing this, she doesn't do this in-show) to sort of double as other possible love interests in her game. From there, things kind of... _**exploded**_.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy the first chapter in my two-part post that marks my last update or publishing of the year. I'll have more to say in the second chapter, as I've posted this and the first chapter both on the same day.


	2. Pines Vs Trees

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 2: Pines Vs Trees**

 **Beginning AN:**

Sorry to say this, but I'm pretty sure that from here until a certain point (and you'll probably find out when you hit the "certain point" as soon as you see the tinier scroll bar to the side) the chapters will get a bit shorter. Uh, especially in the chapter after this, likely. To make up for it, because of the short length I'll see if I can get a lot of this out and with very few hiatuses.

* * *

"So this is how the world ends..." Ford noted, watching the last of the anime-ish girls disappear into the trees. "Not with a bang, but more like with a... ' _OH SOOS, LOVE ME LIKE A CUTESY ROBOT GIRL!_ '"

That last portion happened to be the point in time where Wendy walked in, and just his luck Ford also made appropriate curving moments to emphasize his inpersonation of the .GIFfany army.

The group all held a collective sigh. It was explanation time _yet again._

* * *

"This doesn't make _any_ sense..." Dipper said as he tried to calculate what he saw in front of him, before the need to exposit arose. ".GIFfany can only posses electronics. Even when brought to life. So why would an army of her head out into the middle of the woods without any electronics at all? Unless..."

Mabel gasped. "The bunker! You think they'll free the Shape Shifter?"

This gained a different reaction from each other occupant. Dipper simply tensed and looked like he was ready to bolt for the bunker. Wendy shrugged and said "Well, we know that place more than they do...," Soos tried to hide behind Stan, who simply asked "What bunker?" and Ford scratched his head, asking "That old thing? It's still active?"

"I don't know how we can stop a bunch of video games from taking over the world," Continued Mabel. "But I know that the forest is our best shot."

"Wait." Said Soos. "How do we know that they want to take over the world? They just want me."

"If they only wanted to capture you, they would have done it by now." Explained Dipper. "They're planning something bigger. We know it. Now let's get out there, and-"

"Woah woah _woah_." Stan interrupted. "I wouldn't let you two go up against one goblin monster. This is an army. You better leave this to the adults. Stay here and see if Ford can glitter-proof the Shack or something. Just remember: If he tells you to step head-first into danger, stay out of it."

Mabel scowled at the phrase 'glitter-proof.' Dipper let a barely audioble sigh at the word 'Woah.'

Regardless, he dove off following them, giving a war cry of "You mess with them, you mess with me first!" before disappearing through the trees.

And staying out.

Ford actually stuck with Stan's plan; he simply whipped a pen out, wrote something on a slip of paper, walked out of the Mystery Shack, and wrapped the slip of paper around the unicorn hair.

"There." He said. "I wrote a sequence of numbers that should naturally counteract with anything made from illegal primes. They may have physical forms now, but if they act anything like they did when they were digital, going in here will feel _very_ uncomfortable for them."

"Wait." Said Dipper, looking at the slip of paper. "That's it? We could have beaten Rumble and .GIFfany with a piece of paper?"

"No, you'll also need unicorn hair-"

"I'M ON IT!" Mabel cried.

"-And from what I gathered, the unicorns have moved to a different and unknown location in Gravity Falls after something you did. I'm not pointing fingers, but... becides," He tried to laugh off his accidental blame-place. "I'm sure you had a lesson in facing .GIFfany and this Rumble guy _without_ any short cuts."

Dipper solemnly nodded. Soos, on the other hand, looked a tiny bit more offended.

"I _did_!" The latter said, "Why is the whole world being _punished_ for it?"

This was the point where Stan walked back out of the woods, a smiling AI with Rose's green hair (only this one was in a knee-length dress that appeared to be made out of leaves) walking by him. Her hair was also slightly different, with a pattern of leaf-shapes above her forehead and a mild added thickness so it wouldn't look unlike a bush or a tree's leaves. She also ditched the cable bow, much like most (but not all) of the other followers, and this one in particular replaced it with a five-petal white flower sticking out from the side of her hair. Her skin also appeared to be far pinker than the character she was a derivative of. Stan himself was looking downward, rubbing his arm with a flushed face.

"I was wrong. I can't speak for the pink-haired psycho on TV, but these people, out in the woods? They're _harmless_."

The AI becide him laughed, confirming something that was on the other's minds: "Hey Soos, it's me, Professor Rose! I got a new dress! What do you think?"

He was trying to hide the flushing in his face, or the fact that his brain was asking him _What's like, holding that up, anyway?_ "It's um... it's... leafy."

"Come on, why don't you see what my following sisters are doing!"

 _Everyone_ was hesitant to enter. Going off the trail, out into the unknown, away from the general public... even Stan clearly had to take a breath in first. But everyone's been to the woods at least once over the summer, how will these supernatural beings make it any different?

* * *

Even though none of them were making sugar (as far as the Mystery Shack group knows), the AI group in the woods specifically were being too sickeningly sweet. Dotting around, past viewing distance from the Mystery Shack, was the huge collection of rainbow-haired simulated girls brought flesh, all of which bar Rose herself were helping something green. A cluster was trimming brush into the shape of what looked like a pair of welcoming gates. Past said gates lied a small plantation, more AIs being careful to water those. One of them floated up to an unbalanced bird's nest, re-adjusting it so that it was no longer rested on a breaking branch. Several of them gathered around an especially large tree further down the back. Becides whatever Ford probably placed out here, there were two electronics admist all of this: A lone television near the front, and a barely visible (from the 'entrance') green computer at the far back, resting on a cylinder of equally-green metal.

"We just started a few minutes ago, but this will be our botany group!" Rose cheered. "The world is always a world of demand. So... I thought about trying to turn it into a world of supply! We're trying to grow as much food and as many trees as we can, a place to lower hunger and have more wood for houses!"

Mabel snickered, keeping a low volume. "See? I told you _something_ good can come out of this! She wants to end world hunger!"

"Okay," Sighed Dipper, "And what if she's _not_ just pretending to be nice? She's just one professor. There's fourteen more of them, .GIFfany is one of them, and between her and Rose I'm betting the Rose is the exception and .GIFfany is the rule, and not the other way around."

"ROSE!" Mabel cried out, waving her hand around.

"What?" Asked the green-haired AI.

"Dipper brought up a good question. What are the other AIs doing?"

"Oh, them..." Her smile faded for the first time since entering the forest. "Well, none of them are in Gravity Falls. They picked places that match with what they are trying to do. We just set up a way to link from place to place using these things we call Wires. And... as for the professors... they don't agree on everything I do."

"Rose!" Cried out a voice from behind. Whipping around quickly, the team saw three AIs rushing out of the bunker's entrance, carrying what looked like another Dipper in their hands. "Rose Rose Rose!" The origin of the voice was, of course, one of them.

"What is it?" Said professor asked.

"We were looking around the land with thermal sensing, and found a hidden bunker... and deep inside one of the tubes was this boy! He was the boy you said fought .GIFfany in the past, right?"

Rose stepped forward to take a closer look. "...That looks like him, but the boy is right here!"

She pointed at Dipper. He, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, and Ford all knew _far_ too well where this was going.

The 'Dipper' held by the anime girls coughed a few times, getting up on his own. "I just... want to tell you..."

"Rose!" Cried out the original Dipper, "That's not me! That's not a clone of me - trust me, I know them - that's-"

And the second 'Dipper's' eyes blinked sideways. Donning a delightfully surprised smile with leering eyes, he stated. "That you are all idiots."

This was when the Shape Shifter noticed the group that raided the bunker weeks ago. "Well, what a surprise we have here? Sixer was freed from his prison, he brought his brother along, and the group that outsmarted me are back. What a reunion!"

And he morphed himself - into an exact replica of a purple-haired AI in the vicinity, giving a short laugh. However, judged by how he cut off his laugh and noticed how many similar-looking people there were around, he didn't like his new form for long.

So he morphed into something else. Something he did back in the bunker - the Hide-Behind, a form only Ford recognized, and barely at that. But he moved too quick to be fully analysed. Like that, he was behind a tree, surely about to plot something else.

Rose turned to give the Mystery Shack group another look. She put a hand on her hip, thinking.

"Was this a trick you pulled off?" She said, looking over at the confused and frightened group of AIs that were just carrying the Shifter.

"What? No, it wasn't, we went in that bunker weeks ago and found that thing and froze it. Well... re-froze it." Dipper explained. "Then he turned into me. Something about a big taunt, a 'you'll look like this if you keep looking for answers,' he was a villain. We are _not_ affiliated with that guy. At all."

Of course, the Shape Shifter may be able to make himself _look_ like a Hide-Behind, but he was far from the real thing. It wasn't long before Wendy managed to tackle him, and she really just drew out a deep breath more than anything.

"I knew it. I can't speak for Soos in the twins since I never saw .GIFfany before, but fighting _two_ creatures we pounded already isn't something I want to be doing for long."

This was when the other AIs started joining in - zapping the shape-shifting experiment with their own little bolts. The entire time, Rose was staring at the Mystery Shack gang with a tilted head.

The television in the front began roaring to life - .GIFfany's image appeared, before she coated most of her upper face in shadow by her own will. All that was visible were her eyes, and even they were in the form of pink crosses glaring from the shadows.

"Rose." She said. "You had orders. Follow them. Or else."

Two wires shot from the screen of the television itself - colored in bright, hot pink - each wrapping around one of the Stan twins in a split-second.

"Now I will show these two a preview of the park. I saved two seats for them. Ford, for making the anti-AI pack."

"How did she know?" The six-fingered author in question asked.

"I have my spies. And Stan... for having a bad taste in animatronics."

"Ugh!" Cried Rose, ".GIFfany, we didn't _really_ agree on this! Why aren't you capturing Soos, anyway?"

"He needs to see what you and the other professors have done. Becides, I only have two of these special cables that can travel through any electronic right now, and I wanted to get people in pairs."

Ford could barely kick the capturing pack to the rest of the Mystery Shack team before .GIFfany yanked the Stan twins inside, warping them through the television screen and into the now-visible background. Which appeared to be that same location from the broadcast, seemingly made of light pink metal.

Rose got everyone's attention with a scream, and followed that scream by knocking over the television. "If _she_ thinks she can be _such_ a great leader while I can't, she can just warp to this place herself. In person. As a real girl."

She noticed the gang, just as Dipper got his hands on the pack.

"Oh. You guys." She also looked at the Shape Shifter knocking aside other AIs in the form of a Manotaur, turning to face Rose herself. "I'm sorry, but it seems... it seems you may have introduced a source of violence into our garden. If by accident."

"So?" Asked Wendy. "You brought that thing out. We were just defending ourselves."

Rose hesitated before speaking again. "It's just that... we kind of... want a non-violent atmosphere around here."

The Shape Shifter morphed himself into a large pile of rubber with eyes, deflecting any subsequent lightning blasts while he tried to form a counter-attack on his own. Against the increasing number of support AIs. Rose herself waved the army off.

"I'll join you in a second! For now, I need to ask these humans... if they could step out for a few seconds."

"Sorry, but no." Wendy stomped a foot. "You kidnapped two of our friends. We're basically at war now."

"I'm... I don't want to be, but I can be serious! Please... it will be easier if you just-"

" _Where did .GIFfany take my great uncles?_ " Dipper asked, even if he just took one step back.

"Yeah." Wendy added. "I've _wanted_ to hate you. I haven't found a reason to hate _you_ , but I don't like your boss, and when I find a reason to hate you, you are _dead_. Nobody messes with the Pines on my watch."

"I swear!" Rose held her hands out defensively. She broke this to give a zap of her own on the Shape Shifter, but instantly resumed, "This wasn't what she told me! If only- if only..."

The Shape Shifter threw off all the following AIs, stomping his way over to Rose and the central group with his still-rubbery feet. "And you must be their leader?"

"Well... not exactly... but at the moment... if I don't want to follow .GIFfany's orders anymore... then yes! I'm the leader."

"Tell me this: Wouldn't it be a good start to freedom if I could use your army as my own?"

"They're not an army. They are... 'students' that volunteered to work with me." Rose looked down. "Oh. Wait. I see where you are going. With this. You want to kill me, don't you?"

"I don't _want_ to, since I'm already free. I just thought about taking over your army and... how do I say this, _your head on a pike_ sounded like a convincing way to get them on my side."

"We'll never betray Professor Rose!" Cried out one of the following AIs.

"Even if she wants to betray grand Dean .GIFfany!" Cried another, as more of them took a break from their crop-managing to join along her side, some pushing the Shape Shifter back.

"I thought she was more of a headmaster or something..." Said a third, a number of AIs gathering in.

"You mean sneaking up on and betraying .GIFfany wasn't our main plan all along?" A fourth asked as artificial university students flooded that section of the garden. All the while, more started jumping on the electric-resistant alien to give him a more physical beating.

And a fifth just gave out a small call of "Rose you're sooooo sweet you're my favorite professor." Before Rose herself stopped them by holding a hand up.

"I will take care of the Shape Shifter first..." She said, after a long inhale to prepare. "Then the humans... then I can answer some questions from the students."

And this was where most of the humans themselves started taking a more defensive stance. Rose walked backwards, straight into the wooden makings of a larger tree behind her as her being appeared to slip right into it. Seconds after she completely disappeared into the plant behind her, it shook. Roared. Its branches began moving.

"That's impossible!" Dipper said, already knowing where Rose was going with this. "She- they can only possess electronics!"

"Technically, aren't all things electronics?" A vague 'face' with overly jagged 'teeth' marks and glaring eyes were formed, obviously being unnecessary. "Energy is mass times the speed of light squared... I can convert my mass into energy... then back... it makes sense. Doesn't it? But I have only trained how to do that with plants. And only because of the garden I wanted to start in our new worlds..."

The Shifter tackled her to the ground after that, rolling his six eyes before morphing into yet another form - this one recognizable from the Bunker, once again. A flaming mass that only has the faintest sign of a face out of anything on its 'body,' and as it turned out the flames were real enough to spread on Rose's newest possession. She rocked back, sending the burning Shape Shifter flying, but at the cost of spreading more flames to the nearby flower sets and crops.

With some strugling, Rose managed to extend a few beams of electricity to two neighboring trees. Which were then heaved out of the ground, root by root, and turned to form makeshift arms for Rose's latest puppet. With several mighty thumps, her new arms slapped against the burning side of the central tree, extinguishing that fire. It still left the growing flames that flew across the forest unbounded, something that the Shape Shifter hid himself among.

The side-AIs were at it again, rushing with wooden buckets filled through a near by river with efforts to get rid of both the fire and the Shifter. The army of supernatural 'school girls,' one by one forming a chain of filling, tossing, and rushing back to repeat. Some of them took a more aggressive stance, braving the flames and once again doing hop-bashes into the roaring fires itself to try pinning down the Shifter's location.

Suddenly, human feet were moving... buckets were picked up... Mabel doing those actions wasn't that surprising. Neither was Soos.

It was Wendy who was questioning why she was the third of them to be helping out the artificial monsters. Well, stopping a wildfire from burning down the entirety of Gravity Falls and then some was one reason. They all still had another.

Dipper picked an option that he percieved as neither helping nor hurting them - using the kind of logic he cooked up during the panic. And that was to seek out which of the flames about were the ones that were actually alive. Each time he thought he saw an eyeball, one of the AIs tried yanking at it with some form of electric pulse, getting no result but extinguished smoke. It wasn't until Rose herself lumbered over there - roots scurrying along the ground like individual legs - and used her 'arm'-trees to slam on the burning spot did anything seem to go anywhere.

The Shifter rose back in yet another form. One that was, once again, seen by the Mystery Shack group just before his freezing. A hulking rock monster that sucker-punched the tree mass to the sky.

Ironically, this is where the tables finally turned on the opposite side. Mabel and a decent percentage of the AIs leapt on the creature, this time armed with tasing shocks (aside from Mabel herself) that stunned him just long enough for Wendy to swoop in and bring an axe down on his face. Nobody questioning how the Shape Shifter survived with 'only' another spurt of green blood, the AI army hurried back to the bunker's staircase, leaving the humans alone with Rose. And the loads of schoolgirls that didn't run off to freeze the form-changing monstrocity.

Rose herself finally landed back, all three of her trees shattering to reveal her regular self, which fell to the ground right after. Dipper was shivering at this point.

"That shape-changing..." She said to herself as she rubbed her head. Her dazzed expression lightened up when she realized that the Shifter was now gone, something confirmed when she saw a group of her following students walk out from the bunker empty-handed.

"He'll be in there longer," One of the students cheered, "When we froze him, he changed to look like some large... fish thing? To break out. And he was that way when he got frozen again!"

Rose nodded, and looked back at the team from the Mystery Shack. "Now, as for you. We need to discuss some matters. As I mentioned before, you may have introduced a far too violent environment to live in. For our garden of peace. I- don't want to be so cruel about it... but if you could, leave... while we work things out..."

"We helped save your garden!" Mabel cried out, pointing an accusing finger at the botanist's leader. "And you're blaming us for 'being violent?' You were too!"

"That was in self-defense! A necessary choice! Becides, that creature may have been that way because of what you did in the bunker before."

"Nope." Dipper cut in. "He was always like that. Trust me. He only looked like me because he wanted to show me what would happen if I 'kept digging.'"

Rose still didn't budge from her stance, aside from standing up even straighter. "And the AIs... they had to prove themselves, that they were of proper alignment and will not disturb our calm nature. I could have made an exception with you, since you cared about our forest enough to-"

" _Your_ forest? Forests aren't your private property! We should be asking _you_ to leave, you're being led by a crazy robot girl and her army of equally-robotic, equally-crazy digital girls brought to life!"

"Do not make my job any harder than it is..." She bent over in a split second - Dipper was already on to fiddling with the controller for the AI-vacuum when he saw this. Moreso when electricity shot through the grass around her in a straight line, the clump of blades near the end growing up to form a hand.

"Watch out!" He cried, "She's gonna shoot us!"

All the hand did was point a finger out towards the gates. It wasn't even close to being aimed at the team. Rose only sniffled, until she saw that the pack was starting to hum. Dipper didn't even have time to press anything - he was still processing his recent switch-flips. Rose, however, managed to get out three words:

"What are you-"

The pack's nozzle began taking in a greater amount of the air in front of it, Rose's standing point included. She threw the arm back out of the grass in favor of trying to use it to defend herself, just to get caught in the vortex anyway. Trees rustled above, bushes were nearly ripped from their roots, AIs ran away in a panic, leaves were scattered around - including most of Rose's own outfit, which was sucked down from a full dress to something of a leaf bikini by the time the leading professor was pulled in. A brief 'shrinking' effect added on to her in order to make the part-digital, part-organic girl get stuffed to the video game-trapping machine.

Dipper finally got to switching it off, but by that point Rose's intake caused both him and the device to be sent flying back. In a small panic, he turned the vacuum around until he noticed the small, black computer screen. With some green sparks, Rose appeared on it - still appearing to be in the flesh and not 100% digital - rubbing her head.

Every single other AI looked at their wrist and noticed armbands that spawned from seemingly nowhere. Which soon started flashing pink. And, seconds later, they disappeared into pink bolts of lightning that appeared to travel skyward.

* * *

Just after .GIFfany finished toying around with what looked like a watch on her wrist, several zig-zags of pink lightning zapped around the matching metalic shell she was located in, turned back into the respective AIs from Rose's garden club.

"Sisters." She said. "Dove informed me. Rose has failed. You will stay in the Construction Site from now, helping me build it into the one weapon that _will_ be able to cause the apocalypse. I never had any hopes for those _botanists_ , anyway. And their vegetable obsession."

Some of them nodded with trembling eyes. Most, on the other hand, crossed their arms, which got .GIFfany to add something to her little speech.

"If you want to find a way to leave, you can. Just like the captive humans. Otherwise, feel free to keep them... company."

* * *

Dipper was rushing to stream one excuse after another. "I'm sorry- the supernatural creatures we found so far... your slightly-creepy video game group... Stan and Ford got captured, and-"

"No. I deserved this." Rose said, leaning to the screen with a sulk. "I should have worded myself better. I only wanted my students to be safe. I should have thought about your safety too."

"Can I..." He sighed. "Get you out?"

Rose took a while to look around. She pressed a hand against her side of the glass screen, then brushed them along the interior. Her face heated up when she was done.

"Wow... I want to meet this Ford man. He did an... impressive job. Keeping everything inside. Th-there's no reversal switch as far as I can see, but it looks like Ford wanted to make a second machine to take AIs out one-by-one. You should be able to release us if you break it - but please don't! You still need to capture the other professors, including .GIFfany!"

"Where are they? Is there a way we can go straight to where my Grunkles are?"

"No... we have the Wires, like I said earlier, that link to the points of the world that the other professors are in. But! I am only part of a system of twelve. Dove and .GIFfany herself are... kind of split from us. But .GIFfany said that Dove is watching us somehow. And I think she implied that she can take all AIs at once. Unless... since I'm still here, unless they are in this. Hm... maybe, if you can seek out and capture the rest of us, you can find out how to get to Dove! And then, from there, she should have a personalized Wire leading straight to .GIFfany's location!"

"That's only fourteen. I thought there were fifteen of you."

"...There's a small complexity, but you don't have to worry about that. I need to do the worrying - to see if these key cards can escape. Otherwise, you may need to buy a _lot_ of plane tickets."

She reached down the clevage of her leaf-top, something that didn't even seem like a good hiding spot even when it was a full leaf dress, and yanked out a yellow card. Dipper and Soos both turned beat-red, enlicting a small giggle out from Mabel. Rose tossed this behind her, and sure enough, the card itself popped right out of the nozzle. Mabel was the only one willing to pick it up until she gave it a brief sweater-cleaning.

"This will let you access the next professor's domain. But we have this set up like a linear chain right now, to prevent..." Rose looked down in her own empty black space. "To prevent people like you, but meaner. Do you know where the gate is?"

Wendy looked at the abnormally long grass, still forming the signaling index finger, and frowned back at Rose. "Yeah."

"Go in the exact opposite direction of that. You also may want to pack a lot, this could be a long mission."

"Anything it takes to get our Grunkles back." Said Dipper.

* * *

After a brief trip back to the Shack and a trek through abandoned corn stalks and planted peppers, the gang reached the extreme end of the garden. Where, still resting along a single huge cylinder, was the Wire mentioned before, now with the group getting a closer look at it. The same pure green as Rose's hair and eyes, it only bore a slight resemblance to the monitor of an old-fashioned desktop. While not large or flashy, the main trait about this that caught the eyes of the group was that a single cord in matching color appeared to be extending from the monitor before ending abruptly, with a haze of visible green electricity acting as the 'end' to the system. The only other feature of note was what appeared to be a thin slot just above the actual screen.

"Stick the card in. And, so that you will all travel together, make sure that you are all within... see that circle?"

The group looked around, Mabel even kicking away some fallen leaves. Sure enough, there was a circle of dashed lines in green chalk surrounding this mysterious electronic. Triangles were spaced evenly through the dashed circle, each with an exclamation mark letting people know that it was tied to a risk of some sort.

"We meant to add a little more, so that it would be more noticeable, but it will do for now. That circle is the marker where that all organic beings, and what they're touching,"

The group gave a collective sigh of relief at that latter part, each for different reasons.

"Are transported in. Except the floor - .GIFfany actually had to take a few tries to get that to work out."

"Are we gonna be blown up and the 'us' that's made over there is really just random air parts or something?" Mabel asked, "I'll still teleport, I just want to know if I stay the same me."

"No. I requested that we used a method where everyone is transported whole. It's safer for the environment."

With no further questions, Mabel plunged the card right into the Wire's slot. Suddenly, a low buzzing noise was made as a pale dome formed to the boundries of the dashed circle-

"Onnnnne last thinggggg..." Rose said, blushing. "This Wire system... it's different from how .GIFfany stole your family and can warp through electronics, and... it's never been tested on humans before."

By the time Dipper asked "WHAT," the bubble shrunk itself into the screen, leaving only a blue and white hat as the one thing that failed to teleport.

* * *

Despite not being part-code, the system worked pretty well with the four fully organic humans. It helped that this was likely made with the newly organic video game characters in mind, and any 'companions' that they want to take over.

That did not mean that the process wasn't beyond bizarre. Everyone was floating in a massive, empty void with just the slightest glowing signs of color. The card was thankfully transported in too - as it was being scanned by an invisible scanner (and yet the foursome could still note the cliche wireframe markings on it as it was being 'read'), which then projected another bubble over the four matching the card's coloration. With an invisible force, the group was pulled downward after a few moments of weightlessness. Downwards and on to a direction, into a large tube of green with 1s and 0s floating in the distance, all the way to the bright light of the electricity at the end of this tunnel.

Crossing the static did not lead to them getting shot out and into the forest while tiny or anything. Instead, that's where the first signs of teleportation came in. The gang, still bubbled in yellow, was now warped into a much bigger expanse. Clearer binary numbers stretching across the open void, other bubbles of various colors moving around, above, and beneath them, and fifteen massive circles of colored energy zapping and breaking around them.

This part was by far the longest of the trip, so while Mabel and Soos swam to the edge of their 'ride' to look in awe, and Wendy gripped her axe in fear, Dipper flipped the pack so he was facing the screen again and gulped.

This question... didn't really deserve that gulp, right? He wondered as he rubbed the top of his hair. It had an obvious, reasurring answer, didn't it?

"I lost my hat. Is there any-"

"Sorry." Rose flushed again. "When I sad this was like a linear chain, I was counting returns to Gravity Falls before going through the chain. You see, 'People like you' meant that .GIFfany expected someone to try to attack us, and in the case of that, she **only** gave us cards of the next professor in line. When you get the next card, you can come back to the place we're going, but even I don't have a green card. W-we were supposed to get all cards, for each professor, after a week of a 'cooldown period.'"

"So, in other words..."

"You can't go back to Gravity Falls. Not before you make eleven more stops first, at least. Or just buy plane tickets. But that is not recommended when you have the option to use the Wire system."

Just like that, the cross-computer ride became less entertaining for all parties involved.

* * *

Colorful mass-space once again turned into crossing an electric barrier, then going through a tube closer in color to the bubble the group was in. Shooting up the tube to a wider, emptier space, and finally getting ejected from another, yellow 'Wire.' This one out in a desert. As with the green one before it (and for future reference, all other such computers unless otherwise noted), it was rested on a cylindrical mass of metal matching the computer's color. All four of them were squeezed out at once, as with their packed up supply kit, scattered along the sand.

"Ugh, it figures." Said Soos, getting up from a fairly rough landing. "Level two is a desert level. What a cliche."

Unlike the bustling garden in the woods, there were no signs of moving life - either organic or video game-turned-organic - at a first look in this area. But there was one thing lying in front of the pseudo-computer that was almost impossible to ignore: The back of a large, dark purple house, towering at four stories. With the words "Hope to see you again!" spray-painted on in a dark red, hanging above a massive pair of maroon doors.

Wendy attempted to open these doors - first with her hands, then her hands and a foot, then an axe. In order, the following happened: It didn't budge, it still didn't budge, and the axe was sent back flying into the sand. Once she started looking around the windows and found them to be black-tinted and hard as rocks, Dipper once again flipped over his vacuum pack for answers.

Static. He would have been worried that he broke the pack on its fall, but the static being the same yellow as most other things associated with this place was a clear giveaway that the professor of this region was likely blocking Rose out on purpose. With communication with Rose being impossible, and the back exit not giving any results, the gang did their walk to at least look at this from all angles. The left side of the house was nothing spectacular - just rows of more cheap wood and blacked out windows. The front... had a typical porch to it, and the words "The Giffening: Sparks of Fear" spray-painted just above the door.

It was inside that things changed. Pitch-black, almost, making Wendy doubt that the windows were really tinted. Going by audio, wood creaked beneath the four with each step they took, only audioble because of the complete lack of any other sound. An echo from the footsteps implied that this place was large and empty, but finite. The air inside was also notably cooler than the dry winds around the outside.

Sure enough, the doors closed on them, leaving them in complete blackness. The gang, by instinct, aligned with their backs facing one-another, even in their state of blindness. _Someone_ had to ask the one-worded, fate-tempting question, and that someone turned out to be Mabel.

"Hello?"

Then, everything came on. Too fast. Dim lights illuninated the manor's foyer, revealing a figure in front of Soos. Roughly larger than a human at first, it was dressed in black robes that flowed to the rotting wood below. It carried an imposingly large scythe in one hand, and held a hooded, grinning skull in place of an actual head. The creature introduced itself with a maniacle laughter, pointing a bony hand at the Mystery Shack group as they rushed to their weapons. But it was already too late.

Drawing with one hand, the Grim Reaper-like image brought its scythe up and-

Intentionally struck the floor about a good mile away. Its laughter was replaced with a more familiar voice, a normal hand emerged from the arm holding the scythe to take off the black-and-skeletal glove on the other, and both hands took off the skull mask.

Underneath was yet another cheap .GIFfany recolor, this one bearing extremely bright yellow (that would _not_ 'just' be considered blonde in any circumstances), very stringy and messy hair with matching eyes. And slightly tanner skin. She also had very bizarre orb of swirling, colorful gas-looking substance within her hair, much like Rose and her flower.

Just when Dipper thought she was a one-woman army, a crowd of AIs slipped themselves from behind various potted plants and hidden closets to join in on the laughter.

"WELCOME TO THE GIFOCALYPSE HAUNTED HOUSE! THE GIFFENING: SPARKS OF FEAR!" She announced, throwing off the Grim Reaper robe to reveal a second dress that looked like someone stitched several pieces of other cloth together, then ripped it in parts. Just about everything she stressed out in the following sentences were met with looking skyward (or, ceilingward) and shaking her hands in the air. "I am your host, the _BRILLIANT_ Professor Kathody, _MISTRESS_ of the dramatic arts and _lover of all things horrific!_ "

Dipper let out a sigh of relief. "So... do you hate .GIFfany as much as Rose does?"

"Oh, of course not! I'm a loyal follower! And seeing as you're probably the ones Dove warned me about... I get to capture you! Now, stand still, this won't be _THAT_ painful."

She brought her scythe up, taking advantage of the sound it made along with the shine of the blade. Wendy took an offensive stance, while Soos and the twins had to scream first.

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Wow. I didn't think this chapter would be as long as it is now. Mostly because I kind of wanted Rose to end up inside that AI-hunting pack thing (for reasons you can catch a glimpse of at the end of this very chapter) and that I was thinking about a sort of lead-in to the next chapter, then thought "Okay, this is gonna end _right here_. At this _exact spot_. No other options."

Speaking of Rose's capture, I'm still not really fond of how it was handled. It doesn't feel natural at all that, after a lot of trust-establishing moments, Dipper would just kind of have that last-second reaction. I'll see if I can come up with some alternates.

So this is around the point where the plot will start picking up, as the story is now at the spot I really want it to be. I hope you enjoy the hunt for the other professors. Also, if you don't like recolors, don't worry: They're not really the stars of this story. Just, more along the lines of the obstacles. There isn't going to be some overly long and tired out love triangle where Soos must decide between Rose and Melody with an obvious ending or anything like that. This isn't listed as a romance for a reason.

...Building on that would be the news you _don't_ want to hear. Let me put it this way... while there will be a lot of other appearances from past canonical characters (the Shape Shifter is the rule and not the exception - also it likely won't just be the monsters, expect some of the non-Mystery Shack humans to get involved briefly), don't be surprised if this closing author's note right here is the only time Pacifica's name comes up in the entire story. Bill would be in a similar boat but I forgot at first that I mentioned his name back in the first chapter. Which kind of implies how unimportant he is to this story.. Sorry but this is about them as much as "Soos and the Real Girl" was. (Which is to say, it isn't.) Again, this isn't tagged as a romance for a reason, and I would never write Bill as a romantic cool guy anyway.

Relatedly, I'm afraid I won't be taking suggestions or anything like that. This story is already planned from beginning to end, and while I'm still fleshing out things in the middle, it's relatively minor stuff.

This is going to sound really arrogant, but if you by some chance like these .GIFfany recolors, you're more than free to do whatever fan stuff you want with them just as long as you credit that this is where the idea came from. I'm not gonna pull a don't-steal or anything on them.

With that out of the way, this will be my last chapter-posting for the rest of the year 2015. Which seems obvious since this is also the _second to last_ day of 2015. So, spoilers, there's nothing for New Year's Eve. I hope you enjoyed this, and will enjoy the following chapters to come. (Don't worry, if you feel the need to read all author's notes, this will probably be the longest of them until the ending.)


	3. Dry and Wet

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 3: Dry and Wet**

 **Beginning AN:**

Sorry for the sudden pause. But if you just look over at the scroll bar, you might be able to figure out why this chapter took so long to write.

By the way, I didn't really stop writing this chapter. Since I published the first two chapters, I was working on this a little a day. It's just that this is pretty long by the story's standards, so it took me a while to get through it.

I originally didn't plan to publish this on Valentine's Day, but at the rate I ended up looking over this chapter for its pre-publishing edit, things were going nicely. I hope nobody minds, but... a day before this came out, I kind of held off publishing it _on purpose_ and saved the absolute last tiny ending bit for that day, even though I could have quickly and easily got the chapter finished and posted the day before.

I forgot to mention this back in the first two chapters, but I'd like to say that whatever the cause of the force field over Gravity Falls is (regardless of whether it's just a town thing or it's really the Time Bubble - not that I'm fond with the "that was the time bubble" theory because that would mean that Mabel's brief action of selfishness would be _rewarding_ the rest of the world by not making the apocalypse global and that would be kind of bad writing but that's another thing - or whatever the cause is) doesn't exist here. To make the plot possible. I don't care how key-important it will be, this time, the weirdness is going global.

* * *

Wendy was the first one to take action at the yellow sim girl's strike. Kathody's swing was deflected by the axe she carried with her - thankfully, the scythe wasn't as strong as the materials made to build this manor. Wendy was able to fend this off about-evenly, if barely.

"Look for a way out!" She practically barked to the others. "Find the card and leave!"

Kathody immediately backed away from her own attack, causing Wendy to stumble over while the AI laughed. "Oh WOW you just wanted my key card?"

"If it means beating someone who still supports .GIFfany, no. We also want you inside that." Wendy pointed over to the AI pack to emphasize her point.

The professor of fear floated backwards, holding her hands behind her back the whole time. "Hmm..." she said, "I mean HMMMM... That's an interesting pack you got there. Glad what Dove said about sending a wave to cut off all signals from it was true, by the way. It is amazing how fast we AI can develop stuff. I mean, this used to be just a huge, empty house out in the desert. But now it's... yeah I already introduced my amazing haunted house. No need to waste my breath for the future tourists!"

This was where several AIs lept out in costumes. Some of them had full ghost bedsheets, some dressed in similar grim reaper costumes as Kathody, others with _supiciously convincing_ green paint and faked injuries to resemble zombies... the usual stuff.

Also expected was that the lights dimmed (but did not shut off to complete blackness), and noises from this professor's AI army followed that. Just a bunch of cliche ghostly wails, and arm movements that were only visible by the ladies causing themselves to glow.

"Are you sure we even need to fight her?" Dipper asked, "I mean, she's far away from civilization... we could just deal with .GIFfany first and come back to her later."

"She's still a threat that wants to capture us." Answered Wendy, looking around to see which copy of .GIFfany she should strike first.

"Us, maybe, but if she just does things like this to anyone who stops by..."

This was when one of them grabbed Soos by the shoulders, screaming in his face to immitate a jump scare. And, following that ear-bursting yell, the group of four was knocked onto something that was just pushed behind them. A... part of a roller coaster?

The team barely had any time to analyze the unmatching pink cart that they were pushed into before it started moving. Mabel in particular was the first to get up to her feet: Watching as they were being led past rows of more costumed school girls, cardboard props, stuffed giant spider replicas, and other 'horrors' that seemed to have little sound boxes attatched to them.

In the front, Kathody 'led' this ride. She flew herself backwards as the coaster winded through twists and turns, dips to lower basement levels (which this manor apparently had lots of - it helped making a lot of space and it removed any issues with somehow involving the house to be smaller on the outside), and kept trying to throw out 'horror' elements.

"None of us are falling for this... kiddy ride!" Wendy cried. "We fought things that were a _lot_ scarrier, and they weren't even trying! And one of them was your leader!"

".GIFfany says that she is not really my leader. We professors are more along the lines of equals. In fact, it is only out of pity for her state - _that you caused_ \- that we let her keep our starting name."

The coaster reached its end, sending the group of four flying out. Landing just by Kathody's feet. Dipper in partifular refused to raise his head, knowing that he has a view straight up her ripped-up dress. He wasn't sure about bottoms, but based on some of the tears alone he could tell that Kathody _probably_ wasn't wearing a bra. Didn't want to risk seeing something no kid of his age should. Especially on the enemy.

Mostly because he didn't like the tiny idea of _liking_ what he saw.

"That was only because you haven't entered the main attraction!"

The lights brightened back up again, illuminating another pair of large doors. The tops of them curved around in varrying shades of red, forming root-like designs that crawled their way around the whole small room that the team was dropped in. Like her introduction to the house in general, Kathody prefaced this next trial with exaggerated guestures.

Of course, her first move _had_ to be stepping one foot clear over Dipper's head, letting the very bottom threads of her skirt go over his face and remove any ambiguity on whether or not looking up would give him an eyeful. Soos, Wendy, and Mabel were already leaning against the front of the roller coaster, more amused by how the last of their group was cowering than curious at what lied behind Door Number One.

" _THIS_ is my grand attraction! Picked from around the town of Gravity Falls, brought all the way over to this lovely house in the Sahara Desert, presenting! The one! ...Not the only! A reaaaaall monster! But first, a message from our sponsor."

Kathody snapped her fingers, opening the doors behind her. Dipper's common sense finally took over his sense of modesty, and he shortly ended up backing himself to the other three. He was breathing quickly.

" _Thankfully_ she's wearing underwear." Was all he said.

Behind the professor, a small square of static displayed among the shadows before it was replaced with a more familiar look on an electronic: .GIFfany, still wearing the shadows over her upper face, still gleaming at the team with pink eyes. Still in the mystery location.

"Impressed by the results of one of my non-traitorous professors, enemies?" She asked.

"Um... no, not really." Dipper was the first to answer. "It's just cheap Halloween decorations thrown on an even cheaper house. I'm not even sure if there's a _real_ real villain below you." He squinted. "I _think_ I can make out the shadow of something, that your TV is lighting up, but..."

"Scares don't count if they're cheap jump scares dude." Soos shook his head. "Trust me. I have some horror games you need to play."

"At least Rose had some kind of a goal." Was Wendy's comment. "I mean, yes, it was a far-fetched goal, but she still wanted to do something right. Kathody's just running bad entertainment."

"Well, it's not really over with... she said this was just the beginning..." Mabel attempted to counterargue.

"...When I said that Soos needed to see what the other professors have done, I also mean that I wanted to see him interract with them. Either in-person, like this, or through Dove."

Mabel suddenly felt an urge to correct the wrong usage of 'in-person,' being the interaction expert she was. But she already knew doing so would be pointless.

"If both he and I would be impressed, then the entire group will be welcomed into my ultimate destination with a great position of power. My domain. And Kathody, I believe even the preview was well. But you need to push yourself further if you want to rank high in my new world. The other reason why I do not just end your playthrough is because... well..."

The shadows by her eyes briefly vanished, revealing an embarassed face.

"It's not finished yet."

Static, followed by a long, purple hand setting the TV set down.

"And THAT was our sponsor! Now," Kathody spun in place - blowing her dress up and confirming that yes she had on black panties underneath - but also to add style to her following two claps, turning on the lights behnd the door. Dipper, Mabel, and Soos gasped at the creature within.

"But that's impossible!" Dipper cried, "We got rid of you!"

"You did?" Asked who appeared to be a maskless, coatless Summerween Trickster. Apart from the lack of those features that once made him look humanoid, he still looked identical to the one Soos ate. Down to which candies made up which facial features. He tapped a 'foot' impatiently.

"I heard what you had to say about this attraction. Awful. Shows how little scare spirit you have."

"I know, right?" Added Kathody. "I think you should be the one to capture them! Show them how wrong and icky they really are. And why they are wrong, that's the important part. Let them know and understand why, and .GIFfany will let me rule along her side, no more questions asked!"

She turned to the Mystery Shack group. "To answer your not-quite question, Halloween in Gravity Falls was popular enough to be done twice a year. Do you really think either Halloween would leave enough 'loser candy' for just one Trickster? This is the Summerween Trickster's twin brother if you may, the plain old' Halloween Trickster!"

"And did you just say that you killed my brother?" The second Trickster asked, leaning in to the group.

Wendy sighed. "Seriously? Does everybody have a twin brother?"

Kathody, clearly losing her patient act and just wanting her 'plot' to get on with it, directed over to the blob of candy. "Just move already!"

With another hand motion, she also directed Door Number Two to open. It revealed a glimpse at... a staircase. It appeared to be a wide staircase of sorts - more of the same house wood composing its... four steps. Four large steps, giving it a total height that looked like it could successfully take someone a whole floor higher. Not that anyone examined it carefully at that moment, as this was when the group of four took off _running_. With everything else seeming like an even worse idea, they came to the silent concensus that heading up the same path the roller coaster took them would be the best form of escape.

Shortly following their run was the roar of the Halloween-Slash-Summerween Trickster, the sound of his salty loser candy clacking along the stale woods of the manor around them. This was also when the team saw the dark side to Kathody's army of AIs. You see, the 'harmless' wall pop-outs weren't that harmless when a threat clearly trying to kill them (Kathody's orders said otherwise, but this guy was avenging both his brother and this very house. And knowing the Summerween Trickster back at home/summer break, there was all sorts of disobedience written all over him) was chasing them along the same time. Especially when the girl's grabs lost what little remote playfulness they had and outright turned into forceful restraints. The team couldn't get up one whole floor before Dipper had each of his legs grabbed by sim girls in bed sheet-ghost costumes.

Sighing, Wendy swiped the AI-catcher off of Dipper's back and used it against its first non-professor victims. Just as the Trickster caught up with the foursome and shot a spider-like limb at Dipper's heart, the kid was knocked on the floor when his previous captives felt something drag them in.

The pair of ghost-dressed girls looked to Wendy at the same time, attempting to claw back. But it wasn't much use. Unlike Rose, taking the two mooks in had much less effort - within just seconds they were shrunk, pulled in, and disappeared through the nozzle. This didn't clear up the static or make Rose audioble, but Wendy was fairly certain they were in there. With just the slightest shake in fear, Wendy took a step forward with the pack still readied out.

"And what is that?"

"Take one more step closer and you'll find out the hard way!" Technically, that could be said for the human group as well. For a different reason.

He actually took one step back - _THANK GOODNESS_ \- and held out one slender limb as if to time the chase out. "You've done it. You've captured two innocent souls who only wanted to show how much they loved the spirit of horror. I don't have much to lose, anyway, you only gave me more the reason to see you as-"

"Hold up, hold up, hold up." Said Soos. "Wait. Your brother kinda _wanted_ to be eaten. He's like, I don't know, lonely. So while I _did_ kinda kill him, it was what he wanted. In fact, the whole reason why he came to life is because he _wasn't_ eaten. Kind of messed up, I know, but... if you're the same way, can't we just eat you?"

This earned him a slap on the face. For a being made out of candy using slender limbs, it hurt a surprising amount.

"You idiot. It's not Halloween _or_ Summerween! Both days have long passed! You'll just spoil your appetite and get sick!"

"What if you just, like, leave and then come back on Halloween. And then I can eat you! You'll live longer, enjoy the sights of the world, and my friends and I won't be captured or killed! It's the best of both worlds!"

He tapped the same slapping leg to what can losely be described as his 'chin,' before punctuating the following by pointing at them meanacingly. "You still trapped two innocent-"

"They're not innocent." Explained Dipper. "They helped someone who is willing to help someone who once tried to kill us and other people because she was crazily obsessed with this guy." He pointed to Soos. "And we think you were just tricked into her sick world-rebuilding after she **ends** it."

"But even if they want to cause the apocalypse, they are doing it with _the proper spirit!_ And that's the important part! Why do you have so much trouble understanding one holiday and its related themes?"

Wendy sighed. "And why do you have so much trouble with 'Back off or you'll find out what happens when you meet our AI-buster?'"

"... _AI_ buster?"

Well, crap.

"As in, the weapon is only intended for artificial intelligence? Like the girls who escape from their copies of _Romance Academy 7_? So, someone like me - who can't really be tapped into an artificial intelligence - wouldn't be affected by it? I just want to be sure about that, it's just a hypothetical question."

"...Guys, let's run again." Was all Wendy answered.

And like that, the AIs seemingly 'unpaused' and went back into jump scare mode. And Wendy continued breaking Dipper's record of one whole capture by zipping away at them left and right. Knight-dressed sims bringing their spears down? Gone. Skeleton-outfitted AIs using their sharp claws to swipe at them? Gone. Unfitting cat costumes by those who mistook 'horror attraction' for 'general Halloween attraction?' Gone. The ones that weren't even looking at the gang, instead focusing on some hand mirrors? ...They could wait. This wasn't to say that the other three weren't doing jobs on their own. When it came to the Trickster's assault, thrown planks of wood and even full cardboard stands were tossed to slow down their candied persuiter.

"You haven't answered my question yet! That thing isn't gonna trap me, isn't it? No? I guess it isn't then! I'm taking that as an 'it isn't' until you answer! I'll continue trying to eat you!"

"Wait dude, you said that me eating you isn't part of the holiday spirit! What about you eating us?"

"That's a Trickster thing, not a holiday thing!"

This was when bolts of electricity were sent flying through the Trickster, causing him to explode into his individual candies. The Mystery Shack group came to a halt and spun around - after all, it was obvious that this house was being shifted around them anyway. This particular hallway... it's been a while since they went up another flight of stairs.

Sure enough, Kathody was levitating behind the Trickster's splattered components, wagging a finger at the monster as she watched him slowly try to regroup.

"Dang it, I said no killing! And in most cases, eating something either kills it or it's already killed! You know what? I'm not even sure if this is the proper fighting area for you guys anymore! You want to go on to the next domain and get around our failsafe daisy chain? Go ahead! If .GIFfany lets me and my plan successfully beats you, I'll get to keep this place around and entertain and spook everybody!"

"That's way too many 'ands' in one sentence." Said Dipper. He punctuated this by looking around the still-regrouping Trickster and letting a huge sigh of relief.

"Well, I'm thinking about teaming up with the next professor in line. We'll fight together. But first... did Rose, like, possess something huge? I think she had picked three trees just to turn into something scary?"

"Yeah."

"That's her Main Possession. We all kind of picked something we got really familiar with getting into and out of. I'll bring mine with me. In the mean time, you're more than free to give the next professor a shout out!"

Thankfully, she didn't reach between her breasts to get the next card out. Instead, she tapped something on the back of her hand. Six large, holographic squares beamed up a few feet away from her: A row of five light blue cubes, with a lone pink one below them. Within four of the higher boxes appeared to be images of some sort - a blue key card, an ice cream cone, a cardboard ghost prop, and a cell phone. The lone pink one appeared to hold the scythe she had at the beginning. Kathody reached a hand into the former of the blue squares and threw the deep blue card at the gang.

"Here! Use this! See you in the Bermuda Triangle!"

And just like that, she zipped off. Well, more like she flew up through the air, crashing through enough layers of the manor's floors that rays of sunlight beamed down. Sunlight which helped the gang see the reforming Halloween Trickster.

* * *

The cell phone in Kathody's 'inventory' began ringing. Having been through this drill, she sighed (a mandatory part of the drill) and yanked it right out of its little square.

" _Greetings_ .GIFfany. And no, I'm not _proudly_ answering you because of our caller ID. Otherwise I wouldn't have predicted that you would call after I just left-"

"Of course you could predict what I did!" Snarled the unofficial leader of this whole bunch. "I am predictable! That is my... that's me! Who I am!"

"Okay."

"Listen, you giving up your domain means that I have more AIs to help me build at the Construction Site!"

"Okay. I think they would rather start a date by spooking than start a date by building some fancy... whatever it is you are working on. If you're not lucky, they may add horror attractions to your final place."

"...Some of Rose's were sneaking in little gardens. It is disgusting. I wanted little to no organic life involved in my ultimate creation. Unless it is dates passing by."

"Okay."

"Stop that! If you are to leave your post while the enemy is still there, I will have to take all AIs that are not captured and return them to my site."

"Go ahead. Like I already said, except you do not want me to say it in a way that resembles two letters spelled out together."

"I'm zapping them away right now."

"Can I still keep my Main Possession?"

"...I forgot about that. Yes, I can't even think of a use for a staircase."

"That's because you're just not me, toots."

"I sort of _am_ you."

* * *

.GIFfany kept her promise, though none of the four humans knew that that was the reason why the band of costumed AIs disappeared in similar pink zaps as Rose's followers.

Eh, less problems for them. Because of the lack of surrounding artificial intelligent girls, the hike back to the ground floor of this manor felt a distance shorter than even the ride down. Within no time, the back door was found, greeting the group with the comforting word 'EXIT.'

It was no surprise that this led to the familiar back doors they saw when first gazing upon the cheap haunted house, complete with the yellow Wire right there in front of them. What none of them saw was the yellow static that was still being displayed on their pack - not until the source of it came crashing down feet away from the computer with a large weight below her.

Kathody laughed, giving the group enough time without attack to see that she was standing on the staircase from before, the one locked away behind the taunting hands of Door Number Two.

"Hey. You had some fun in the haunted house part, but I always thought that my incredible desert was... um, underused. Let me use it a little more! By making it..."

Winds howled past her as she tried to think of a way to finish that statement.

"...The preview to my next fight? Well, bye!"

With one leap, she and her staircase took off, flying out into the distance of the dry air afar.

This action cleared up the AI Pack's screen, revealing the back of Rose's head. She was apparently looking at a pileup of costumed AIs in front of where she was. Noticing that the connection was back on, she turned to the humans outside her screen and smiled.

"Hello! You must not have tried killing any of my sisters, if you vacuumed so many of them instead!"

"Well, we were being chased, so I didn't have enough time to think of how..." Wendy started. She trailed off when she noticed Rose looking at her as though she (Wendy) just killed her (Rose's) puppy in front of her.

"Well... if I remember the map meeting right - as a computer program with a humanlike body, I have high memory storage - you are in the Sahara Desert. The next professor's domain should be by the Bermuda Triangle. Before you go, I need to warn you about something. The last time we talked... Searah, the next professor, said that she wanted to make her future datefriend's site deep under water. There is an extrance for her and her followers to bring their possible datefriends, but it's hidden."

"Why couldn't we talk to you when we first got here?" Asked Dipper.

"You might not like hearing this, but this is another question that can be answered with Professor Dove's spying. She saw this, mimicked its programming, and ordered all professors to emit a signal that blocks the communication port. This is why I need to tell you now that her Wire will dump you off on a small platform in the middle of the ocean. And it is on this platform that you need to find the hidden entrance."

"Where is the hidden entrance?"

Rose sulked. "Searah wouldn't tell me. The _only_ sisters of our's she told so far were Dove and .GIFfany, and you would not get an answer out of them. She wants her meeting any player-dates to be as isolated and perfect as possible, and she's even pushing us out. She sees her own sisters as competition. I only see other humans as competition, not minding my sisters at all."

The last two sentences greatly increased the temperature in Soos's head. "Wait, what does that mean? You mean-"

"If the other AIs wanted to..." she pressed one hand against the screen, bringing her face close towards it. It was at this point that her green hair began to fall over one eye. " _I would share with them. My boyfriend slash girlfriend can also be their's..._ "

"I kind of thought that was .GIFfany's big apocalypse plan from the beginning." Dipper said with a raised brow.

"Yeah." Wendy nodded. "It explains why you haven't all killed each other over him yet."

" _Soos... I have always wanted to give you a chance as a second player..._ " This was when Rose used her free hand to pick at the few leaves that remained on her being. " _...Going two-player. Maybe when this is over, we-_ "

"Hey, stop advancing you hippie freak! There's children around!" An AI dressed in knight armor pushed Rose back from the screen. She turned to it, huffing a small breath. "You should have just let Kathody taken you! Now you'll either be stuck out here or you'll have to deal with Searah! And Searah is a _jerk_. She has this stupid 'meaningful people only' policy and if you don't meet her really strict standards _you'll be drowning_."

Dipper sighed. "Wow. Any other advice?"

The gang, including Rose, just exchanged glances.

"Not really. Just that Searah sucks." Said the one who previously spoke.

"Wait," Mabel asked, "What was that thing Kathody did with those blocks and she got this card out?"

"Oh, those!" Rose stood back up, going back to her modest and innocent tone. "You must have seen Kathody's Indexitizer! It's an easy-to-add, easy-to-remove device that can pick up a number of 'items' - stored in light blue slots - or 'weapons,' stored in pink slots! They're all counted as items unless they get used as a weapon, then they're counted as a weapon until they're out of the index long enough to be forgotten. Most of us professors were given five slots for items and one for a weapon. Followers usually only have one slot for each. I don't really believe in using Indexitizers, that's why I kept my card in my-"

"Okay! We know _exactly_ what we need to know!" Dipper cried out. "Let's move on!"

* * *

The ride itself was just like the one taken to enter the desert. Nothing really spectacular.

Thankfully, the atmosphere was a lot cooler - a little too much. As forewarned by the simulated girls, this blue computer shot them out on a tiny, cool-gray circular platform out in the middle of a sea that stretched out in all directions. There was also some obvious water splashes along it - the seemingly infinite ocean's waves crashing along the base helped.

"Wow, really?" Said Mabel. "How can someone even fit the secret here?"

Wendy looked at the screen on her pack - sure enough, blue static.

Dipper started fiddling around with the yellow card again until the group of four heard a battle yell coming from the direction of the sky.

Kathody. Still riding along (or 'carrying,' but in reverse?) her bizarre-sized staircase, laughing as always. Once she landed, she inspected the area around her.

"SEARAH!" She shouted, seemingly to nothing. "SEARAH, THIS ISN'T FUNNY! YOU GOT MY TEXT, RIGHT? NO WAIT, YOU DID! I REMEMBER THAT YOU TEXTED BACK! YOU SAID YOU WERE OKAY WITH TEAMING UP WITH ME! UNLESS YOU LIED!"

Dipper was already dipping his head in the sea water in search of some hidden buttons around the highest submerged part of this platform.

After seconds of nothing, Kathody took out her phone again, hovering _just_ out of reach of the humans.

"Hello? Professor Dove? Are you there? Ah, you're right behind the humans, good."

She noticed _everyone_ turning their heads around. Only to be greeted by the horizon. Except Dipper - technically he was now facing the Wire. Kathody laughed at this, her first aknowledgement of seeing the gang there.

"Metaphorically!"

Kathody would have teased them about this longer, until the sound of a splash was heard. Just like that, the next 'professor' made her appearance. Blue was her hair and eye color - no surprise there. What was a small surprise was that, for an ocean depths vs desert comparison, her skin was actually darker than Kathody's, so it wasn't a matter of tanning. It was a bit difficult to see right now because she was half-submerged with her arms cross around the platform, but everyone could tell that she had on a Japanese school swimsuit and bare feet. Her hair was styled and curled over to vaguely resemble a wave about to crash down, she had a pool of oddly-fresh water that somehow remained stable in collected in her hair as with the previous professors and their fancier hair-decorations, and her attention was completely on Kathody.

"Searah!" The one back from the desert replied. "So, team up? Does that sound like a good idea? It is better to have a spectacular villain team up while they're still early in their little adventure. I mean, Rose was like fighting zero professors. And now they'll skip straight to fighting _two_!"

"Hmmm... from what everybody else tells me..." She started looking over to the humans, staring intently. Dipper in particular started to shiver - and not just because his head was wet in the middle of the ocean.

Of course she had to start with Dipper, giving him an accusing point.

"You! You're a cynic. You'll never have faith in our world-rebuilding project. Even if you have a good mind, you have a bad atmosphere around you. You're not in."

She smiled for the first time when she addressed Mabel.

"However, I like you. You have a great atittude towards everything we have done so far. You show a lot of support, care, and friendship. And you are both far more idyllic and idealistic! I can let you in. Soos, as someone who is already designated a boyfriend, I can let you in on that alone, but I kind of like you for your personality myself. Kathody, you're an idiot. Just go away."

Her yellower sister crossed her arms.

"We've been through this 'judging' nonsense before." Said Wendy. "I don't have to listen to anything you say. Let us in or I'll capture you myself and make Rose fetch the next key card out of you."

Searah fully emerged, stomping over to the redhead while digging a small wedgie out of her suit. This was the first time Wendy noticed that the AIs were actually a good bit taller than even she was, helped by Searah looming down on her with an expression that practically said murder.

"And you're the worst of them all..." She whispered. But at just the right volume for everyone to hear her. "I know your type. You only see us as the enemy. Fodder to mow down and capture. If you found a way to kill us, you would do it in a heartbeat. Indiscriminant. Generic monsters."

"That's not even true!"

"It could be. Watch yourself."

Wendy just groaned, mostly because right after saying that the blue-haired professor dipped herself back into the depths.

Silence followed, aside from the same sounds of the water crashing along metal.

"Wait a minute!" Said Kathody. "I can just turn myself into an electrical stream and zip through the metal myself! Then hack into the database and cause a path-"

That's when it started happening. Out from the water, adjacent to this lone platform, emerged a boxy elevator, at a pretty generous size. Revealed behind its doors was Searah, tapping her foot.

"I forgot about your - well, our - ability too. Well. If you want to be that big of a pest about this, I can let all five of you inside. It would be a great opportunity to change some minds."

Hesitantly - even Kathody - the five of them stepped aboard on this platform, both present professors keeping an eye on the pack to make sure that they will not be joining Rose and the captured Kathody-supporters.

Of course, the staircase fit in too: It seemed to be just wide enough to fit such a behemoth, as though Searah intended Kathody to take it with her all along. This obviously wasn't the case. It did, however, come with a benefit of being crammed in between the two active AIs and the four humans, making any surprise-capture moves on the latter team's part difficult.

"So, uh..." Dipper began. "...How long does this take?"

Searah sighed. "About one more minute."

* * *

After what felt like something much longer than a minute, the group was practically dumped out into an area (pretty much pushed by Kathody's staircase), all four of them stumbling around the ground before they could get a better look at it. Once they did, both professors allowed them to take in a decent look at the scenery:

Most of the base's walls were clear, first of all giving a view to the coral-coated depths around and the occasional sea life (and Gobblewonker) swimming past. That being said... the view of the interior was a bit less impressive than the vast green expanse its curved window showed. More metallic-blue made up the straight floors, some tower-like structures in the distance, and... what appeared to be containers directing sparking water around. It was within and around the water that the followers of the third professor were visible, and the pattern of following AIs became apparent. Rose originally wore a dress (now it's more along the lines of a tattered bikini) made entire out of leaves, her followers _mostly_ having white dresses or other leaf- or plant-made outfits to match that. Kathody was in the form of a reaper-like costume as part of presenting herself as a horror attraction even though it wasn't Halloween yet, and _all_ of her followers wore similar horror-themed outfits. Searah, in her school swimsuit, had followers who likewise all wore bathing suits - which made a tiny bit more sense considering that a lot of them are working in the water itself. Some as generously covering as Searah's itself. Other one and two-pieces were spotted. And some... sling...

It was time to stop looking around.

"Hey," Speaking of those half-naked devils, this is what Kathody had to comment the second Dipper turned away from one in a soaked white shirt and tiny bikini bottom. "Does this mean I can borrow your followers? I mean, it's not like they do much of anything but help you and look nice to appeal to possible dates."

"No. They only serve me. Not you. You already had your chance and gave it up."

Kathody crossed her arms as she and the humans let the blue professor give them a tiny tour.

"These towers are where we try to build new forms of entertainment. Like televisions. It's not very organized. This one in the center is our water purifier. I'm making a secret, elite-members only center. Where the dates me and my followers bring in will have top-tier comfort, not given to anybody else on the planet. And we can drink the purest, best water. We also make next-tier second-best water, but that stuff is what we mostly export to other domains."

"How do you do that?" Dipper asked. "Each time we used a... um, 'Wire,' we saw what looked like thousands of other copies traveling with them! How is that possible if the only key cards are given to the professors, and even **they** just have one of each!"

"We don't export... by... the Wires, if they get hacked the water can be... hold on. We export by flying, but..."

Searah drew her own Indexitizer. A similar series of boxes, once again drawing out a cell phone and pressing a single number. Her guarded card was in there too, orange in color.

"Hello? 'Headmaster' .GIFfany? Oh, wait, you want me to call you a doctor too now? Well, screw you, you are barely a professor- no, my 'subject' isn't water, it's athletics. Anyway. The humans said that they spotted other AIs traveling the Wires too. That should not be possible. Uh huh... could you answer the question instead of making up all these titles for yourself? I mean what is a Boss Doctor Principal Dean Assistant Manager Sage, anyway? No, shortening it to BDPDAMS doesn't help. You can't even say that like a normal word. ...Okay, _you_ can, _I_ can, but humans can't- who is McGucket? Okay, _one_ human you _kind of_ have a hunch about might, that doesn't mean..."

"So..." Dipper whispered to Wendy's ear. "Why haven't you tried to capture or kill her yet?"

"Hm?"

"Back at the desert-"

" _Brilliant haunted house._ " Kathody said with crossed arms.

"...Back at the _desert_ you were firing after .GIFfany clones left and right! And now, two of the strongest of them are right here - one of them doesn't even have a card anymore! I... I don't want to criticise you, but it seems a little... off. Like you were actually taking what she said seriously."

"This 'Searah' gal has done some annoying things. Punch-worthy things. But not stuff-in-a-box-worthy things. Freaky ghost cosplayers that try to hurt you end up here. I don't even know if charging up to Searah without trying to seal her is a good idea - and trying to run while dealing with another army of clones is a bad idea."

"What about Kathody? She sent the Trickster on us!"

"She's also like our ticket into this place." Wendy began snickering, "Without her you would have had a head cold by now!"

Searah hung up, looking like she was about to throw the phone down and stomp on it. She actually did just that when "YOU HUNG UP ON ME?" suddenly blared from her phone.

"You were seeing the followers that she kidnapped. She takes them all to this place she calls the 'Construction Site,' and she keeps 'lending' them her ability to teleport from electronic to electronic. And since the Wires were based on this power, they can warp from Wire to Wire whenever they want. Mostly to 'check on things.' She never told this to any of us, and we never saw any earlier followers give us a visit. I don't even understand why she does this, she already has Dove and her surveillance team. Now, before we get off topic... Kathody, I already let these humans inside even if two of them are unworthy. And I let you inside. I guess we can try to take them to the 'Construction Site' ourselves. Professor team up?"

"...I don't know, I'm starting to hate the idea."

"Good, because I always hated it. Maybe we can team up in a different way. Such as, say, we try to memory-wipe them or something, or anything that will show .GIFfany what an idiot she's being."

"We can make them our personal mind-slaves! That sounds cool!"

"Yeah. We were all originally programmed to do something like that with our players anyway. But I would rather fight the two non-believers right away."

"...Yep! I was a fan of teaming up evilly. Most bosses don't really do that, crossing over to another boss. I want to be UNIQUE! Not quite completely unpredictable, but more on the lines of a _BRILLIANTLY FORESHADOWED, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN, BRILLIANT PLOT-TWIST_! Also the acting that is revolved around that plot twist can not be so bad! I mean, I can be in a staircase, there are few staircase actors, right?"

"Fight first, brainwash later?"

Kathody nodded with a smirk. "Good to see that we can finally agree on something! Now, let's build on that... I think that can also be applied to acting?"

"I prefer doing to acting, but fighting can involve a bit of both."

"Can I do my dramatic dances?"

"Please don't."

And with that, the staircase _finally_ got some use. This was what Kathody zipped into, rushing off out of the reach of the AI Pack. Searah was about to run off to whatever it was she was to possess, just to get stopped by one of her followers.

"Profes-Professor Searah!" She cried.

"What is it?"

"Can we be supernatural creatures too?"

"We already are supernatural creatures. We are artificially-intelligent computer codes placed into a pseudo flesh and blood human body replica. In game, the original .GIFfany is part octopus."

"I mean like, _pretend_ to be _other_ creatures! I want to be a mermaid! It's appropriate to our water theme!"

"Hey, making the AIs look all mythical is _my_ gimmick!" Kathody cried. Like Rose, she was using her vessel to speak. In this case, the tall, solid wall portion of her staircase tore itself in two and acted as a 'mouth' to pull this off. Not that surprising, considering .GIFfany's apparent need to move her animatronic's mouth. "Now get into your weird 'pure battle water' - oh shoot spoilers - and help me out already!"

Searah looked over at the smiling follower, grimancing at her. "Okay, just because of Kathody, no mermaids! Understand? Now, where were-"

The humans had already ran off, ducking into the door of the main tower. Searah stomped on the ground. First, she looked over at Kathody, to blame her for a microsecond. Then the AI that asked the question, blaming her for a nanosecond. Then, finally, back to the tower.

"Those little... _THAT'S CLASSIFIED! ONLY TO TOP-RANKING MEMBERS!_ ...Now we have to chase them."

"Cool! And they'll have time to guess our weaknesses and build their way up to the main confrontation... I like this boss battle!" Cheered Kathody.

"What are you talking about?"

* * *

"Ford." .GIFfany's stoic, to-the-point voice was heard all around the running man as he bolted down the street dividing blocks of unfinished pink skyscrapers. "Ford."

The author of the journals just kept running. Even as each screen on the buildings, then each window on the buildings, displayed the face of the one copy that started it all.

" _Ford._ "

.GIFfany slid up from the ground, directly in front of him, just before he could make it to the mysterious blackness behind her.

This got him to skid to a halt. She stared at him. Neutral expression on her face, complete horizontal mouth. Blank eyes not really directed at anything. Except for, maybe, his soul.

"I already told you. Running is completely unnecessary. You and your brother are free to explore however you want. I just wanted to make sure that you do not exhaust yourself too much. Now, you are also completely free to leave... if you can figure out how."

She guestured behind herself. Ford, taking _**extreme**_ caution, went by her. And peered over the edge.

Good news, he and Stan weren't stuck in some pocket dimension like he thought. Bad news...

He can tell that the sky was a giant black screen, which explains how he didn't tell where they were at first. Looking down now, he could see about half of the Earth sticking up from the sea of magenta at the bottom of his vision. Visible in its full, circular shape, was the moon. Punctuating this reveal was the field of stars showing themselves distant, behind the blue marble, and glittering as though the ground displayed a night sky.

"You!" He pointed and shouted the second he whipped his back to the void of space. "How did you?"

"This was Gideon's idea." .GIFfany explained. "A location set in the depths of space. We prepared this before the Gifocalypse. Well, I did. I gathered the first pieces of metal. This was most of my doing. Now, I take the following AIs from failed professors and gather them here to work harder. You just escaped when all of Rose's follwers were sent here. And by the time you jumped over Amusement Park Zero Zero Zero One's gate - just when I was about to open it - was when most of Kathody's got here."

"You can't keep me here forever! You might not believe this, but this is not the first alien city I had to crawl myself out of!"

Her expression never changed. All that was different since her physical appearance emerging from the floor was that now she had turned around. And, of course, she turned while he was still looking over the edge. "Then you can tell me. Tell me how you plan to survive the drop from a floating space construction site to Earth without losing your life. I will not stop you. I don't even care about you. I just want... my old boyfriend... to get here... when this is finished."

"I'll figure out something! This place already has enough material to make a good parachute! No, a _great_ one! All I need is enough speed to escape its gravitational pull, and Stan and I will be free!"

"Stan is enjoying himself. Why aren't you?"

This was when she reached out from her own series of 'boxes' - unlike Kathody's or Searah's, her Indexitizer was a long stretch of both blue and pink which shot out past the horizon of Ford's vision. All pink boxes he could see were filled with knives, swords, guns, lasers, and other assorted objects he couldn't even recognize as anything other than strange tools to kill a person. By contrast, only about twenty of her blue cubes showed any items in them. One of which being a collection of three photos, which she took out.

"These were taken from the roller coaster of Amusement Park Zero Zero Zero One. If you believe they were fabricated, you are welcome to return there and ask Stan yourself."

She handed them out, but even from a distance, Ford knew that they weren't fabricated. There was no way that anybody, video game-derived or fully human, could fake what was on them. Stan was not only reunited with his beloved Goldie, but he was genuinely smiling along a roller coaster ride... posing after having the largest stuffed toys imaginable (seriously, they couldn't even fit in that particular photo's frame) being won for him... oh yeah, and he convinced a group of the AIs to toss a ladder into a woodchipper. The woodchipper appeared to be surrounded by parts of a mannequin, but that wasn't the main trait Ford was looking at. It was that grin he held in all three snapshots.

"He already likes me now more than he likes you."

Aaaaand that sentence was where Ford felt a distinct stab to his heart, as much as he tried to hide it. He crumpled up the photos, despite knowing that to be a meaningless guesture.

"And I tried to kill him with a giant badger. What does that say about you?"

"It means that I have to be the brother to get things done! You'll end up being deleted again, even if I'm the only man on the _planet_ trying to stop you!"

"Heh..." She seemed to have _finally_ closed her eyes for once. "'Delete...'"

Most of her face began to darken up several shades, until she only had a pitch-black shadow between her mouth and her hair. Once again, this was lit by the pair of pink shining crosses that were her eyes.

"Stanford Pines. I had had ten reasons for not deleting you. That number just dropped to nine. _Watch it_."

She began melting back into the ground, but seemingly stopped half way. As soon as her near-lightspeed melt paused, she also cringed. .GIFfany emerged back with a sigh, turning a glance over at another AI with fire engine-red hair in a double bun (those particular decorations were black, by the way) wearing a black, sparkling leotard and black, not-sparkling high-heels. Oddly, her skin was a pale azure. The hair by her forehead and to the sides were in a slight flame pattern, a fiery counterpart to Searah's water-like hair. Out-odding the three previous professor hair decorations, a small, live flame was also in her hair, not singing it or appearing to burn her. Ford took this oppertunity to start trudging back, ignoring the conversation that will happen behind him, and form another plan.

"Headmaster Doctor Manager President Final Boss .GIFfany!"

"What is it, Professor Burnda?"

"I have this great idea for a new reality show and... well, what if the prize was the Stan twins? You know, the Pines and Soos and whats-her-name will end up getting there eventually, why not sweeten things up?"

.GIFfany sighed. "That is a bad idea and I will tell you why. One: That would be too close to actually kidnapping them. I wanted to make them happy here as much as possible. Two: They are not just objects and trophies to win. Three: You are one of the _last_ professors in the cycle. Expecting the humans to beat everybody before you is like expecting all of us to lose."

"Well, not you, since you're pretty cool. But, like, take Sandy for example? I like her, but she's not really a fighting sim girl. Kind of meh. Like, Sonia? Meh. Leona? Mehhhhhh... but I'm hot! Literally and figuratively! I'll be able to do it! Beat them all and win! Becides, isn't your whole plan based on the humans beating every single professor we put against them?"

"My _plan_ was that they start taking over the world and spread out from their picked domains! While I build a much better world, one that our dates will have the chance to escape to! But they want to look _fancy_ first and _propose_ ideas. It makes me sick. In fact, each idea of what they wanted to do with the planet makes me sick. I mean, look at you. Reality television? Really?"

Burnda shrugged. "Jeez, sorry I asked. Well, if you want somebody who talks with less monotone and wants to grab some live people as living prizes, step up and ask me!"

"Wait. How did you get here?"

"I flew!"

"Through the exoatmosphere?"

"Yes. I used one of Professor Wendy's air suits."

"...Luckily for you, you share a domain with the one whose card you have. Get back there. Now. It's headmaster's orders."

"Ma'am yes ma'am!"

* * *

This was practically a repeat of the haunted house. More of the follower AIs that tried to jump at the humans were quickly captured, and instead of a giant blob of candy, the team was currently just being persuited by a staircase with a face. As for Searah, they last spotted her standing in some kind of pool of red-dyed water focusing on something, just before the quad ran their way into this main tower.

They couldn't see it, but outside was Searah, sending streaks of electricity into the mildly reddish water she stood in.

Kathody took a break from trying to break into her own colleague's tower to look over at her, getting into discussion.

"Hello! Searah, um... shouldn't you be doing that... faster? I mean, the other professors can posses things in an instant!"

"I want this to be _perfect_. Trust me, this will work, and we'll win after the perfect possession."

Well, at least her 'combat water' was starting to rise up around her. Kathody tried to tap a foot - before remembering that she was currently possessing a giant staircase, which had no such thing. In place of that, she lifted up an end of it and plopped it back down on the ground. And did this a lot. Much banging ensued, with Searah did not ignore.

"Stop that. You are ruining my fortress." She barked.

Surprisingly, Kathody followed that order. Just in time for the water to form around Searah, the professor herself turning into little more than blue sparks dancing around it, and the water itself starting to splash around in life. Immediately, she charged to Kathody's side, the might of two professors in the middle of being possessors.

And thus, they both lept.

 _None_ of the four humans were really surprised once pinkish water started leaking around through the metal of the last few staircases. Yes, Searah was found in the ocean, had an underwater base, and emphasized creating the 'best water.' Of course she's the 'water boss,' just like how Rose is the 'plant boss' and Kathody is the... 'ghost boss?'

What was actually more startling was what happened when they started backing away. Backing past the blue steel... not noticing the glowing fish tank that was bumped into, and only turning around to see its inhabitant. A following AI. One that happened to give herself a scaley mermaid's tail somehow.

"Hello!" She said, "I am currently disobeying my professor's direct orders! I love mermaids!"

"O...okay?" Said Dipper, turning back to look at the forming ooze around them. As banging indicated, Kathody was still around too. They heard another source of banging, that being the mermaid AI tapping on the glass.

"Can you retrieve my mirror please? It is very important to me. I must have it."

Mabel was the one to do this - compared to her last merperson-helping task, this wasn't much. What looked like the one hand mirror was right there, glittering chartreuse outline frame and everything. Before anyone had the chance to object or remind her of the villain two meters away, Mabel tossed the mirror back into the tank, got her "Thanks!" for a reward, and bolted to the next set of stairs.

Despite having what was basically a body of, you know, _liquid_ , Searah was only about half-way through the walls and floor at this point. But this was already more than enough to take up around half of the room's surface area. Thankfully, they were more than halfway up and out, not even watching the merAI swim around aimlessly while fixing a hand and both eyes on that little hand-mirror.

"Wait! Jumping straight to this level wasn't easy! I have done everything to my fullest potential! Stay there, I deserve an easier capture for my reward!" Searah cried out - a scream that sounded as though she made it through the water itself, dulled and slightly gargled. Despite this yell, Searah herself took a tiny bit out of her time to glare at this merAI subject.

"Ahem." She cleared her throat, catching the half-fish, half-virtual girl's attention. "Are you slacking off on your job? Also, the fish part. No."

"It was just to check on-"

"Forget it. I can't let Kathody of all AIs win this little race. I am going back after my targets. You... try to be productive."

* * *

Almost at the top, almost at the top...

 _"DRAMATIC CLIMBING MOMENT! WAIT 'TIL WE USE THAT PLAN WHERE WE BREAK OUT, CLIMB THE OUTER EDGE, AND TURN OUT TO BE RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM THE WHOLE TIME!"_

 _"You announced that, you idiot! It's not a secret anymore! And that was never our plan!"_

 _"Well Searah, do you have any better ideas?"_

 _"Five of them."_

 _"Five? I call a false. You probably only have... maybe, two ideas, total."_

 _"Two? Say that again to my face!"_

 _"Two! Two! TWOOOOOO! Actually I take that back! You only have one plan! Period! And this time I'm counting this one!"_

If emoticons were audioble, the gang would have heard a capital D, a colon, and a less than symbol coming from Searah, by this point several floors below.

Wendy sighed. "Why did they build this so high? It's not like making it taller will help them drain... or filter... or whatever they're trying to do."

"Make the best water." Dipper sighed. "I don't even know if that means 'drinking water' or something else."

They were... _probably_ in luck, depending on how one views seeing a door labeled roof access. On one hand, they were finally cornered and couldn't run away any more. On the other hand... well... they're not being chased anymore?

Wendy was going to pick the roof to end this anyway. One more door to kick down, and sweet sunlight lied ahead of them.

Er, sunlight that's been greatly dimmed by the ocean's depths and replaced with some of its own lit bulbs from within the 'city,' (more like a collection of towering factories) anyway.

Surprising nobody, Kathody climbed over the edge of the exterior, her 'teeth' chattering deviously.

"Nyah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You have fallen for our double-team up move! Haven't you heard of the common phrase 'You can run, but you can't hide?' I did not want to use that since it is so cliche, but you have all left me with no other choice." She made what sounded _exactly_ like her clearing her throat, but considering her current form (or even the physical one before that, to a lesser extent) that would have made no sense whatsoever. "You can run, but you can't hide!"

She was also apparently waiting for Searah's arrival, given the large amount of nothing she was doing after that. Mabel even threw a loose chip of metal at her. Nothing.

And thus Searah burst through the entrance doors, the pileup of colored water now forming a roughly humanoid shape that stood tall on hind legs and bore an impressive arm length. For a "head," she just gave it a featureless, rounded blob. Zaps and sparks of blue electricity could still be seen holding the body up.

"Ooh, facing against two of us at once! What will you do?" Asked Kathody, once again making her staircase move around dramatically.

"Stop talking." Searah said while the water-blob 'pointed' in her direction. "We need to agree on a plan and attack."

"Well, why aren't you attacking?" Retracting from the sides of it, the staircase now held several spinning scythes. It was moving side to side, as if swaying around to taunt someone in a fight. "Come on. We have all the time of forever to prove ourselves worthy for Soos and .GIFfany and whoever."

"We are not even doing that anymore! I thought this was the one thing we could agree on! Forget .GIFfany and only care about our own projects! Your pointless haunted house, and my perfect water factory! Together, they will... somehow take over the world and turn over the economy?"

"Hey!" Wendy interrupted, partly out of an actual way out, partly just out of how long this was dragging on. "Blue. What was that you said before about knowing somebody's type? What type is Yellow over there, again?"

The water blob did not move. No, it wasn't even shifting around like water usually does. Searah kept that absolutely still. "An idiot."

"Riiiiight... and didn't you say that you didn't allow people in based on their 'type?'"

"I kick them out. You were exceptions for a while, then I changed my plan and now I want you to be brainwashed. And Kathody can stick around so she can help me do the same. Were you not listening to our earlier conversation?"

"...Like, you can just get Yellow over there. She _has_ super powers."

"Our goal was to trap players with us, to make them play with us. Kathody is not a player."

" _I_ wouldn't play your creepy game even if you _payed_ me for it - well, that's not true, if you ga- I mean, I'm not a player. Dipper and Mabel aren't, and Soos got over you guys a _long_ time ago. Wouldn't Yellow be more suited to being a 'player' since she loves this fantasy crap?"

"Stop trying to trick me. You have not even bothered memorizing our names. I _just said_ 'Kathody' three sentences ago and you _still_ called her 'Yellow.' Yellow is one of the follower AIs working under Professor Leona, not Kathody. Blue is one too. _My name is Searah_."

"She's still a bad person, according to you. She's done absolutely _nothing_ but bother you and fail orders. But if she was a loyal henchwoman... well, she could probably take the four of us down!"

" _Probably_?" Asked Kathody.

"Heck, she could probably take _you_ down. I mean, that staircase looks like a _tank_ compared to your blob."

"Again. _Probably_? Did Searah start the mind-wiping already and you forgot about my awesome haunted mansion? By the way, Searah, if you did that, _THAT WOULD BE GOING AGAINST MY PERMISSION!_ "

"...Wow. Shut up Kathody." Searah commented as she finally put her blob's 'hand' back down.

"Why should I? What are you gonna do about it? Try to pull a betrayal act on me?"

"If anything, you are the one trying to pull a 'betrayal act' on _me!_ "

"Searah, you're terrible. Again. Come to think of it, I should have these people as my mindslaves alone, and take you out of the equation. Hm... do you think I should try to take over your domain and your followers after that, or ask .GIFfany nicely if I can have mine back and all of my followers?"

"You know I'm just going to say no!"

"You're right. Asking you was a bad idea. Now it will make what I'm about to do predictable! In the bad way!"

Seconds later, the Mystery Shack team had to duck under the onslaught of scythes that flew from this staircase over to the water on the opposite side. Unsurprisingly, they went right through her. Though Kathody's attack did get Searah to take on a wavier appearance, trying to keep her Main Possession fixed.

"You could have at least attacked the humans. Like this:"

Dipper whipped his head around, already preparing a sneak. Sure enough, the same trademark pink Searah-combat water was climbing up the back of his neck. A slap at it didn't help, it only splattered around, moving closer to his mouth. He looked to see Mabel, Soos, and Wendy all struggling to get similar blobs of water off of their backs, but as Searah leaned in closer, it was clear that there was no real use. The first one hit the attack's intention was Mabel; water formed around her mouth and nose, leaving nothing to inhale and only bubbles in the place of a scream.

"You need to learn efficiency Kathody. This is the most efficient way to drown someone. Or... just knock them out. See how I am using as little water as possible?"

So Kathody just lept over to her supposed 'partner.' That staircase was surprisingly acrobatic: It tackled the blob, this time completely sending Searah's vessel over and knocked on its 'back.'

Sparks of many colors - primarly blue and yellow - started flying when this happened. Mainly because of what looked like Searah shoving water down into the creaks and cracks of Kathody's staircase-shell. The horror attraction-runner continued to chew at this strange puddle villain despite not seeing any obvious effects in her favor... chewing... slowing down... more sparks flew as the four humans tried to take cover behind a lone sign...

 _Boom._

A blast occured from where both of the professors were standing, scattering both droplets of water and bits of metal staircase. Within the smoking remains were Kathody and Searah - the former's costume having suffered even more shreads around the mid-section, barely being more than patches over her most important areas. The latter's swimsuit was ripped from the blast, also by the middle.

"You... why did you have that staircase _explode in water_? You are _such_ an idiot!" Searah yelled.

"It is called a great way to save on special effects!" Kathody defended, if pitifully. "You are so obsessed with the best way to do everything, you should know that!"

"...That's not even remotely... why are you... argh!" She went over to her yellow-haired ally, instantly grabbing her shoulders and trying to hold her in a lock. Wendy rolled her eyes at the whole scene as she prepared the AI-pack once again.

"Hey. Where's the next card?"

While Searah continued trying to get a good hold on Kathody, the latter professor just slipped in through the cubes of items Searah had and tossed the team an orange card. Well, 'toss' is probably too light a term. A closer reality was that she threw it lightning fast, causing a quick catch from Soos to prevent it from soaring off the building's top.

"Oh, here!" The desert-dweller shouted. "We already lost anyway! Have fun!"

"What?" Asked Searah.

And Kathody's sentences were her last words before her first experience in the pack. Once Wendy turned that thing back on, Kathody went in with little protest. Searah had a different reaction. She looked out at her massive undersea-city for a moment, seemingly unaffected by Ford's invention. Then, she smirked.

"Well. I would not like to be by Rose or Kathody. Hopefully Sandy will make for good company while you are getting torn to shreds by Cardia! Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha-"

She _willingly_ dove into the pack next, sending Wendy a few steps back and giving her a brief heart-stopping moment when the fact that they were all by the edge of a thirty-something story building sank in. Wendy regained her balance, thankfully. No incidents there.

Of course, seconds after, pink sparks shot up to the sky. What was a bit less expected was that the power seemingly shut off after this. A huge haze of sea-green washed over the remaining human group, the sun only being a chopped circle of light from their depths.

"So..." Said Dipper, "How are we gonna find out way back?"

"The staircase is in a few paces." Began Searah, giggling from behind her capture screen. "From where you are standing at, small male, go forward exactly twelve steps."

"...I think we'll just use the light from your screen." Dipper silently re-took control over the pack. Not that Wendy minded - she actually sighed at not having Searah literally on her back. "I still can't trust you."

Rose pressed herself up to the screen next - Not pushing Searah out of the way. In fact, no single part of them appeared to even be touching. The green-haired AI was looking on with bright, wide eyes and fingers to the sides of her face. "Do you trust me?"

"Um... maybe?"

* * *

Thank _goodness_ that elevator still worked.

Navigating up there took most of the afternoon, as reminded by the team when they saw the sun disappearing under the horizon. Well, in Florida, at least. Back in Gravity Falls there were still a few hours of daylight left. The question is whether or not the next stop is closer or farther from home.

"You should at least trust me." Said Searah, crossing her arms over her wrecked swim suit. "My perfect battle water is ruined and my entire generation plant is gone. I have nothing to gain from trying to capture or kill you. Four humans could never replicate the greatness that two hundred thousand AIs could. Even if it were the other way around - four AIs trying to replicate what two hundred thousand humans built - that's still a 'maybe.'"

"Woah, two hundred _thousand_?" Mabel asked in disbelief. "How many of you are there? I'm not as big on numbers as Dipper, but that didn't look like any thousand!"

"About two million - a lot of them merged into the metal before .GIFfany zapped them away to her domain. Most of the AIs split evenly, but they had the choice. However, there is one major upside. Follower copies are amazing: Before any player input, they are either made to like whoever tells them their interests or they start listening to what a fellow sister has to tell them. We just listed our subjects and got a number of loyal followers, clean slates we could code and program to do whatever we wanted! Just like what we would have done to you after wiping you out. As much as you would like to deny it, you are not much different from us. You just need to be wiped manually. And you can physically do less."

" _Rose_." Dipper practically ordered. "Professor number four. What can you tell us about her?"

"Oh, Sandy is really laid-back!" The first-fought professor spoke up again. "Like me, she doesn't even like Indexitizing! You might have fun. Heck, maybe she will let me still talk to you guys!"

"Great." Smirked Searah, "And while you stare out at those inferior, flesh-bound... disgust bags, I will be relaxing with my followers that are still in here. Kathody is already trying to teach her's. And as for you? Oh, right, you do not have any! Ha ha!"

"Oh yeah, the Indexitizers." Soos said. "This one's more of a nit-pick, but why do you even have it so that you store up 'weapons' in their own category? Doesn't that sound like a waste?"

Kathody ran up to the screen at this, crossing her arms in offense.

"We're not _that_ great! You think we have unlimited resources? No! We only had enough of... that's classified."

"I don't think you would even understand what subatomic waves we use to make the item shrinking possible." Rose shrugged. "It's based on these prism-y crystals, most of them come from your town... even if you did know, it would take a long time explaining the process, and I know you want to save your family as soon as you can. The scientific name for just the crystals alone can fill up four entire novel pages."

"Blame Ford for that." Snarked Kathody.

"We just had enough of what we used to make one item holder for each follower, five for most of the professors, ten for Dove, and two hundred for .GIFfany. If Sandy and I didn't opt out, it would have been a less-even one hundred and ninety for .GIFfany, which she hates. Somehow, this secondary wave we used with some leftovers were less stable unless they were used on objects tied to destruction. I don't know how destruction is measured. It must be similar to weirdness."

"What if they're closely linked?" Dipped asked. "I mean, most of the weird stuff we've seen were also trying to rip us into shre-"

Wendy cleared her throat, tapping on the blue Wire. "Hey. We're edging into nerd trivia here, and your Grunkles might be getting tortured or something. Let's try to split the time we spend talking to these weirdos a bit more evenly, and save the smaller questions after our next fight."

"...Any more questions?" Rose asked. "'Bigger' ones, I mean?"

"Nope, I think we're ready." Soos said as he withdrew the orange card. "Like, I've been waiting to pull off the _best_ way to slide this card in too. I've even been practicing. You see, one way would be if I just slide it in without even looking? Kinda like this-"

He sort of made a jamming motion with his card-holding arm. Sadly, he only missed the slot by centimeters. The card slipped away from Soos's fingers, sent on a flying trip out into the water regardless of the "NO!"s shouted by Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy alike-

The card stopped just before it hit the surface. Almost as if it hit an invisible wall, that shocked it with electricity, and kept it stuck there. A sigh was heard from the direction of the Wire itself as the card floated back.

.GIFfany's shadowed face popped up, briefly and without the shiny eyes. Mabel squinted... yeah, she was _just_ able to make out an eye. One that was rather exhausted. As tired as a game character could look, anyway.

"Seriously?" Was all the pink-haired root of the problem said before fading away. The card landed right on the PC itself - its orange contrasting from the clear ocean blue.

Dipper tossed the pack on the ground, screen facing up, and all four humans began flooding the Rose-askbox. It was a bit difficult to decipher from the four voices going at once, but the bottomline was that there were a bunch of "Why did she help us?" and "Did we fail something?"

To all of this, Rose shrugged.

"I have no idea! I thought I told you, we started out as the same person, but I have no idea how she thinks now!"

"HEY!" Kathody yelled, even though she wasn't visible from the pack's window to its interior. "Let them get to .GIFfany in person and figure it out on their own! It'll be fun! Come on, Soos, try that again! I can't wait to see what my other followers are doing to her construction site!"

Wendy swiped the card away from him before he could insert it (despite Soos crying out "I promise!") and plugged it in, letting the clear, pale bubble take in all active parties.

"By the way..." Said Searah before departure. "Dipper, you should really get your head washed- well, you'll hate Sandy's water. And Cardia... wait until we get to Bubbles's."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Aformentioned "Ending bit" I talked about in the opening was everything after Rose's "Any more questions, I mean bigger questions" line. For the curious.

 _Wow_. This chapter felt like it took an _eternity_ to type. Well, on one hand, the pause between updates lasted well over a month. On the other hand, two things will make up for this. One is the sheer length of this one chapter. The second... while I was finishing this up, I _also_ got a bit of a start on chapter 4! Started it right when I started finishing this one's rough draft! And I _promise_ , this time, chapters 4 onward _will_ be shorter until a certain major turning point. Unlike last time, where I said chapter 3 might be shorter than chapter 2 and it's... not longer than 1 and 2 combined, but it feels like it.

Hiatus-related issues aside... I don't think this is giving away too much if I talk about how the story might be giving away too much, but I'm not really sure. Well, what I want to say is that I may be worried that the story is giving away too much. But I want to strike a balance between a quick-paced plot and a villain-of-the-chapter romp.

By the way, we will be seeing more of the non-Rose recolors. In case Searah and Kathody talking about going over to their captured followers would lead you to think they're just going to sit around and not talk again, leaving only Rose as the exposition guide. If you like them, great. If you hate them, then obviously the expected pattern is that we'll only see them in between domains. If you think they're getting too much focus over the Mystery Shack to the point where it hardly even feels like a _Gravity Falls_ fan fic... that's something I'll aim to fix. Later down the road I was thinking of an original story that was kind of _based_ on this but very very loosely so the issues of keeping true to _Gravity Falls_ won't apply there. No, I'm not going to be replacing _run:gifocalypse_ with that original story. The two are planned to be very different. Currently, I still seek to complete this as intended.

Well, here's to chapter four, hoping that for once it will be a bit shorter and will mark the start of my rapid-fire updating of this long-but-short-story!

(Fun fact, just two chapters in this is already the longest .GIFfany-tagged fic on this website as of posting chapter 2. There's still twelve chapters left to go, since the finale will be split into two endings.)


	4. Getting Grand

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 4: Getting Grand**

 **Beginning AN:**

Well, this is the first chapter update since the finale of _Gravity Falls_. And hopefully it won't be the last. During the marathon leading up to this I of course watched the last showing of "Soos and the Real Girl" and .GIFfany was even creepier than I remembered. Good. I also saw most of "Sock Opera" but that's completely irrelevant to this storyline.

About the force field. Turns out (I don't really think this is any kind of spoiler since the exact reason for the barrier isn't that plot-critical) that the town had some kind of natural confining of weirdness. Assuming that all supernatural objects like the game copies would be bounded by this (since we've seen gnomes and other creatures get through the similar unicorn barrier) and not just Bill's interdimensional stuff... either way, I _guess_ if I wanted to, I could change my mind and say that the barrier does still exist in RG's world, just that either the AIs aren't affected by it (on one hand, at least one copy presumably made it from Japan to the town, on the other hand, these have been juiced up with some kind of black magic) or that while making the Wires they accidentally used the equation that ended up dispelling the barrier. But it's not that plot-important so it really doesn't matter.

That aside, I hope you like what's more-or-less the actual start of these "baddie of the given chapter"-type encounters, without any gimmicks like a nonviolent professor or dealing with two professors at once.

By the way, if you're dieing to find out what the hairstyles of Rose, Kathody, and Burnda look like, I went over and changed the second and third chapters to describe them. It's a very minor edit - I only plan on doing very minor edits to chapters that are already out when it comes to this and any other future non- _SBIG_ works - but it's there.

I'm once again working on the next chapter as I was finishing this one up, so by the time you're reading this, chapter 5 should be a decent way into its progress.

* * *

Considering the underwhelming middle of the Sahara Desert, followed by out in the ocean of the Bermuda Triangle, the gang's next stop being something that was worth sight seeing and not just an endless sea of sand or water was surprising.

The orange Wire dumped the group off in a large rise out in the rocky cliffs of none other than the Grand Canyon. Mabel already scowled at this.

"I... I don't know why... but I feel like we're just gonna keep coming back here over and over again?"

Finding the next band of AIs wasn't that hard. There was no massive manor or fort under the sea... just a group. Standing around right there. Nothing even remotely resembling a building to call home, unless you counted what looked like a number of sleeping bags lying out.

Well, standing wasn't an accurate way to describe it. A number of them seemed to be spinning in place, tossing flower petals around the air. Others lied down, either asleep or to apparently make some sort of prayer. At least one group of five threw a bunch of colored paint to try to form a lightning bolt-shape. Some of them wearing attire similar to Rose's group of plants and vines. Others wore what looked like hardened mud, forming all-too tight 'suits' of sorts. _Everyone_ here wore some kind of artifact of nature instead of regular clothes. Well, not everyone. Al least one was skipping around completely nude in the distance. The apparent professor in all of this was one of the group that chose mud for her attire, something Dipper noted based on A: Her hair color (her hair itself, by the way, was jagged and messy even by Kathody's standards, looking like a very loose rock formation. She held some kind of crystal-looking object in her hair, just like the other previous professors. Her skin looked considerably pale by AI standards) matching the Wire and card, and B: the fact that she was coming right towards them.

"Hey dudes, what's up? Was our fuller Wire system made? Are you, like, testing things out? I'm Professor Sandy, nice to meet you!"

"Okay, it's official." Dipper stated flatly. ".GIFfany's just embarassing herself at this point."

".GIFfany? Oh, like, you mean the Lightning Goddess? Yeah, she's been around... talking to people! Coming into dreams... well, not really. But, wow man, I can _see_ her a lot. These are our worshipping grounds! We grow stuff in tribute... oh, that's our Bottle Group right there, trying to capture a message from her. They'll have to wait until the clouds come in."

Sandy pointed to yet another isolated group. Wearing what could be described as dresses made of glass (complete with the same transparency) was a band of around a dozen following AIs, all staring at sets of glass bottles.

"They haven't had much luck at it..."

"Are you gonna be nice to us and can we just take the next card?" Soos asked.

"Oh, right! I almost forgot about two things. There's the cards now, and... hold on. The Lightning Godness told us to, like, take these certain people and keep them captive, for like a 'contest?' And if our group won, we'd get some sweet buffs on her side and join her in the Heavens? She ordered... let's see... a girl in a green shirt, another girl in a sweater showing a handshake, a man with a question mark, and a boy in a hat. Hm." She put a hand to her chin. "Gotta say, rad coincidence. Must be the stars trying to tell me something. But... you! Kiddo, you don't have a hat! So I guess she wasn't talking about the four of you. Funny. I think you might get along with the other group of four."

Everyone except Wendy let out a collective relieved sigh.

"Now... like, the card for the Wire? I don't have it in my Indexitizer. Just like Rose, I don't believe in those things. I don't really believe in clothes that were, like, _woven_ and stuff either, but Rose was just barely fond of that. Yeah I'm just... we have a low-tech rule over here? Technology's not our thing."

Those sentences broke Dipper's mind for a second. And Mabel knew all-too well the dumbfounded expression he had when this happened, so she figured it was her turn to ask:

"But... you're technology! Didn't you all start off as video game characters?"

"Woman, you're telling me. I'm the leading professor in figuring out how to remove all traces of us being, like, electric and stuff. We'll be a lot like you! Part of the ground and everything!"

"So... can you unblock your signal on our AI-pack?" Asked Soos, pointing to the - of course - orange field of static on said device.

"I also don't like, _like_ other people using technology. Maybe you can convince me to just... not cover them up or something. I don't know. I'm mello. I'm open."

"So... if the card isn't with you, where is it?" Dipper chose to jump to the point.

"Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me! I sent a team of followers to destroy it."

"WHAT?" Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy asked at the same time, a triad of paniced shouts that disturbed the otherwise quiet atmosphere of the canyon.

"Wow. Chill. Didn't think you'd all be so plugged in. Like, the Lightning Goddess and the one with black hair... Dove I think her name was... said that you also didn't really like us? Why are you so angry about such an idea man, chill."

"Because... well... long story short, that's our only free way back home." Dipper explained.

"Well um... oh, this should be some entertainment. Um... trying to catch it, or whatever. Like, I want to destroy it in a _special_ way? So I had my team just walk over to this cave entrance that's supposed to lead to a molten magma chamber deep down. If you go down that trail, maybe you can try talking them out of destroying the next card or something."

They already took off running. Hey, they were probably going to do this eventually in this particular setting, why not right now?

Sandy continued staring in the direction of the gang, silently wondering why they seemed to be in such a rush. Her attention was taken away when she heard someone clearing their throat: Looking behind her was .GIFfany, appearing as a reflection in a single puddle.

"Woah man!" Sandy exclaimed. "I knew you kept appearing to me in a vision! So, my loyal goddess, what do you have to say?"

Sandy started bowing down to this reflection. All .GIFfany did was sigh at first, then reluctantly started up a speech:

" _Ooohhhh..._ " She wailed, " _I am the Lightning Goddess... you will obey my every worrrrrd! Those really were the four humans I forewarned you about! The boy just lost his haaaaat! It's back in Gravity Faaaaalls!_ "

Sandy stopped bowing and nodded.

" _You have done baaaaad... you must take them! Capture them! Then I will give you much thanks for my worship!_ "

"Got it! I must perform a sacrifice!"

"No no no no no! Not a full sacrifice! ...Or. At the very least, _keep Soos alive oooh Lightning Goddess out OOOOOHHHHH..._ "

Sandy turned away, following after the running humans. Though since she was walking, she obviously wouldn't be able to catch up with four runners right away. .GIFfany sighed, stepping out of the screen she hid under that puddle and staring at it with a hand on her chin.

"Should I get rid of this so they don't find out? But there's no other way for me to teleport- right."

She zipped it into her Indexitizer, then flew into the one remaining piece of technology around: The Wire. Instead of popping out of another computer, she emerged from the side of a skyscraper in the contruction site, sighing greatly. A few seconds later, she started banging her head against the wall she just emerged from.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She said with each bang. "Why! ARE! MY! _CLONES! SO!_ _**STUPID!**_ "

* * *

Well... once again comparing domains... Gravity Fall's forest was a nice, humid summer-coated forest. The Sahara Desert's house was enclosed and in a cool, dark location. The fort under the Bermuda Triangle had the ocean's depths blocking out most sunlight.

So hiking out in the open like this, with the afternoon summer sun beating down on the gang in another dry environment, was obviously not very pleasant. The heat had been one that beamed down in the canyon, Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy all feeling it. It came off as no surprise that Mabel was experimenting with using her sweater as a fan.

After what felt like walking a mile (but probably wasn't - even with all of their packed supplies, a walk that long could easily be fatal) lied the band ahead of them. Well, it only appeared to be one AI. Which made sense, since the cards only need one person to carry them. She turned to face the team with reddish hair and eyes, and waved a mud-coated hand at them. The other hand natually held the card, and for those curious, it was a blue-magenta in color.

"Hey, you must be the humans Sandy wanted to capture! Awesome! I was about to destroy this-"

"No you weren't." Said Wendy, once again prepping the AI-pack slash Illegal Prime Neutralizer slash Computer Buster slash whatever any given person felt like calling it at the time.

"Yeah, we're here to stop you from breaking that card." Added Dipper.

"Breaking it?" She asked with genuine curiosity. "Um, I want to burn it. Not break it."

"That's also bad. Look, if you can just hand it over-"

"We'll totally burn it for you." Wendy finished.

"Huh?" Dipper took a moment before he figured out what Wendy's game was. "Oh, yeah. We'll burn it."

"Did you just, like, forget how I just said you're the dudes and dudettes I'm after?" The AI stood there with her arms crossed. "I don't really trust anything you said."

"Well, no. Um... what did Sandy say?" Dipper was going to instinctively adjust his hat. The lack of such an article made him remember. "Oh yeah! I don't have a hat. One of the humans had a hat on. So, we're not the same group of people. That's... her logic, you should follow it too. Right?"

"...Shh. Sh'all think I'm, like, some kind of idiot, dude? Totally not buying it. You could have just swept that hat away and let it flow with the wind. Kind of like my body's doing right now... just... totally its own thing... feelin' that breeze... man..." By the way, yes, she still sounded a lot like .GIFfany in general. The professors were just about the only ones who seemed to be gaining their own voices as of now.

Dipper sighed. "Wow. A minon smarter than the villain they're working for. That's a first."

"I'm not a minion. I'm just, like, a student man."

"Okay, I wasn't lying when I said we would burn that card for you." Wendy finally resorted to explaining the joke. "But in a literal way. We were going to use it, get the rest of the cards, and when we finally got back home, I'd put them in a fire pit and burn them all."

"Oh you wouldn't want to that. They sorta, you know, self-destruct? It's like, a pretty _wicked_ explosion too. You'd be in mad risk of meeting up close with the old Lightning Goddess above in the stars if you were like a kilometer by them when they blew up."

Right after this mook explained that trait, the gang found Sandy right behind them. She still had a pretty dazed expression on her face, staring ahead with drooping eyes. The eyes only become more bloodshot as she appeared to drink some kind of green liquid out of what looked like a tiny bowl of mud.

"Woah. Is there, like, a conflict goin' on? You should chill. Just, everybody chill. And do some jumping jacks."

It wasn't until she actually saw the group that her look turned from a distant gaze to a burning stare.

"Hey. HEY! You really _were_ the ones the Lightning Goddess foretold!"

" _I told you!_ " The only present follower said, "In fact, we _all_ told you!"

"You may have made a fool of me, but you will not make a fool of the Lightning Goddess! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I guess we go to the punishing?"

"We only fooled you once!" Dipper began defensively. "We had nothing to do with fooling you a second time! So, why don't you just shame on us, we'll take the card and-"

"Your second fooling was when you said you only had the Wires to get you back home for free. LIES! You coulda just asked a friend for a ride! I know for a fact that Professor Burnda took a flight over to the Construction Site, and that's over at- actually I shouldn't say where that's over at, that's like our little secret right now. Um... yeah, but still, you're just trying to take advantage of us and steal our cards! And that deserves punishment."

Suddenly, _seemingly out of nowhere_ , a large number of followers flooded in by sliding down the wall becides her. Raising their fists in the air, they chanted. "PUNISH THEM! PUNISH THEM!"

"NOOOOOO!" Soos protested, "Let's not get any punishing involved!"

The second that sentence was finished, he found himself feeling something longer than his height stuck to his shirt, which then lifted him in the air. The card-holding follower had stuck some kind of glue-like mud, tieing the back of his shirt to a pole. With the entire man in one hand and that violet-colored key card remaining in the other.

"Let the punishment begin! With the man who broke the Lightning Goddess's heart!" Said follower yelled. "Then take the others!"

"PUNISH THEM! PUNISH THEM!"

"NOOOOOO, don't punish me!" Soos repeated. "Please, can't we just talk this out? What kind of 'punishment' are you gonna do, anyway? Kill me?"

"That would displease our Lightning Goddess." Sandy explained. "Instead, we're gonna like... just leave you out and let the Lightning Goddess herself cast the rightful judgement. If she approves, she'll take us all to a land of rich, pure metals and games."

Her entire following group chanted a low "Yayyyy..." while waving their hands in the air.

"Wait!" Mabel cried, "Your Lightning Goddess is .GIFfany, right?"

"Yeah. Because she kept the name of a starting AI. One that has yet to cleanse her life and be consumed by nature, yes." Sandy nodded. "She does look a lot like us... and how we all started... but it doesn't look like someone of such awesomeness could be a mere AI at first. Her powers are unbelievable. Miraculous. Maybe we just percieve her that way because the Lightning Goddess takes on whatever form is more familiar and identifiable to the soul who's eyes rest upon her glorious face?"

"...Or maybe she isn't a real god at all and she's just lying to you." Dipper stated.

"Wow! A non-believer. I shoulda guessed, but. Still. A real non-believer. You know what we do to non-believers, right students?"

"We... PUNISH THEM! PUNISH THEM!"

"NOOOOOO, don't punish him! You can totally punish me instead, leave Dipper out of this!" Soos protested.

"Sorry brah, once a punishment is made, it's final. We're keeping you up and at the mercy of the Lightning Goddess. We might also, like, dip you in hot water or something too. In fact, girls, get another pole for the little dude. The one that shoulda had a hat on but doesn't."

Seemingly _more_ followers stormed the setting, forming a wall that blocked the group from getting back to the orange Wire even if they managed to swipe away that next card. All of them had to take a step back, with the exception of the man that was tied up at the moment.

But on the bright side, at least they won't have to hike all the way over to some volcanic fissure. Right?

Instantly, the army swarmed themselves around all four of the human brigade. And this was before Sandy snapped her fingers. After, and in the blink of an eye everybody found themselves stuck to the same kind of pole Soos was.

The short walk down to that follower felt much longer when experienced the other way while stuck up to some long stick. The sun's heat probably contributed to that. None of them could see it from the angle they were on, but they could hear something rising. A large statue of sorts was sliding up from below, resembing a giant stone .GIFfany head. But, again, none of our heroes could see this at the moment. Sandy stood right in front of this.

"Hail the Lightning Goddess!" she chanted.

" _Haaaaail..._ " her whole army responded simultaneously.

"We shall wait until we get another direct message from her! Now, this could take like an hour..."

The stone head's eyes began glowing. A glittering, bright pink. The image of several sparkling stars were visible among this new light. Slowly, .GIFfany's voice was heard.

" _This is your Lightning Goddess oooooh..._ " She started this up again. " _Please wait for me to verify that all four of the resistors are captured. ...Yes, yes! I see them now! I see them nooooow!_ "

"My lady, like, it's good to see you happy." Sandy smiled.

" _I also find it good to get such praise..._ " .GIFfany replied. " _My past creations failed to follow me... they all disrespected me and trashed my forms of communication..._ "

"Oh, man, I'd _never_ destroy the statue built in your memory, goddess!" Praised the orange professor. "Not just because it's my Main Possession, either. No, that's the lowest reason why it's not up for destruction!"

" _I will prepare capturing vessels to take them to my praised land! Oooooh..._ "

"Man, you guys are like, so lucky?" Said Sandy. "She's taking you to her world right away."

"Let us down!" Dipper cried, just barely noticing Wendy rocking back and forth from her capturing stick. "You can't actually believe that that... _THING_ is your goddess! She's lying! I know this, we fought her before! She's just another copy, just like you! You didn't even hear her announcement!"

"Wait. Like, that was the same person as the Lightning Goddess? The _same_ same person? Yeah, I knew some of that already. But..."

 _Now_ he was getting to her. Should have started with that.

"Yes."

"I kind of knew that copy! We - as in, my group. The other professors don't really dig that slang, you know? - Called her the Risen One. Because her body was destroyed, but she rose back from it. She's also got these new powers and promised to help us out... never thought those would be the same people though. Kind of cool, kind of... I need to speak to her about this."

" _You do NOT need to speak to ANYBODY about this! I need Soos!_ " .GIFfany 'The Lightning Goddess' herself commented over the statue.

"Who?"

"The question mark man! Mark your capture as final and admit that you have won!"

"Hang on, hang on, hang on. I just need to ask you a few things first."

.GIFfany sighed, but let Sandy continue.

"Like, what are you really just that same 'headmaster' copy of us? I shoulda known, both of you going by the original name of '.GIFfany' shoulda been a huge clue."

"...Um... actually, I prefer Ultimate Chief General Six-Star Supreme President Mayor .GIFfany."

"Ah! _Ah!_ You are her! Nobody else cared about adding titles in front of her name as much as you did! Not cool, girl, not cool!"

This was when Wendy broke free. As nobody removed the Illegal Prime Neutralizer from her, she instantly used it to try to start vacuuming up Sandy's 'students' that gathered around the other three.

"Woah, woah, woah. Hey man- um, woman. Girl since you're like 15?" Sandy thought over her terminology while she held her hands out defensively. "You're like... they better be safe, or else you're gonna have a problem."

"They're safe. But my friends _aren't_!" She told to the leader. "That's why I'm thinning some of your herd!"

"We're not gonna really do much to you." Sandy shrugged. "Since that goddess wasn't really the Lightning Goddess per-say, and we were wrong to assume she was even technically a goddess in the first place... we're kinda gonna let you go. Also, since you're not being like kill-y to them, I guess you're not gonna have a problem. No problem at all."

Dipper had long stopped struggling, and not just because all the AIs around him (oddly reluctantly) backed away and Wendy was coming near him. But also because he needed to ask something: "Wait. What happened to 'punishing' us because we lied to you?"

"Oh yeah, that! Totally forgot about that! Thanks for reminding me bro. But yeah, we gotta come up with a punishment now. Maybe... maybe something that doesn't involve the Lightning Goddess so much? No, what about just regular old .GIFfany?"

"PUNISH THEM!" The chant began again. "PUN-" And ended just as quickly.

"Wait... wait! She lied to you too! About being a god! Isn't that a lot worse? Why would you still work for her?"

"Actually, we just assumed that. She didn't really call herself the Lightning Goddess until we said it to her when she first appeared in the heavens. I mostly just thought that the Risen One would have also came up with a new name or something to tell her apart from a generic copy, but I guess that floats her boat. So in a way it's not like she _lied_ to us exactly, just that we _assumed_ the wrong thing, and _then_ she built on that lie."

"That's exactly what happened with me and the hat!"

"Well it's still different now since I just feel like my whole life is surrounded by lies. I dunno."

He sighed. "If we could just have that card. Um, who has it now?"

"Dude man, no way bra. The only liers I trust right after they lied to us are family, and that's because of credibility. You know Professor Rose? It's kinda like that and her non-violence."

She took a leap back. Specifically, right into her Lightness Goddess statue. And, as she melted right into its stone, it predictably began to move. Unlike the water, staircase, or the tree, it didn't really change its visual features other than gaining a redder glow for the eyes. The ground around the gang shook as all AI students backed off, setting the other members of the group free. (Despite this, Wendy still snipped up extra members to the Illegal Prime Neutralizer.) Slowly, it rose, revealing...

That it was pretty much just a head. Well, that's not completely accurate. To make movement better, it apparently had these large circular shoe-like objects that supposedly represented feet. The statue head did have a full head of .GIFfany-styled hair, which Sandy withdrew from the ground, using her possession powers to get it to curl around to the point where it wouldn't be pushing the main part of the statue off the floor.

Wendy put a hand over her mouth at the bodyless body Sandy placed herself in, desperately trying not to laugh at it.

"Alright, alright, we'll take on your 'fight.'" She did let a laugh escape as she lied about predicting this being an actual battle. "Promise us you'll give us that card if we win."

"Um..." Strangely, her voice inside this statue had a bit of an echo. "Okay? I'm only saying this because I don't really think you'll win. It's part of my code that if someone asks something from an impossible task, I should reassure them by saying I'll give it to them. I mean personal code of honor, not like, video game code. Man, wouldn't that be extremely convenient if you _did_ win? I wish my sisters had equally convenient codes of honor, but we're kind of, um, a weird and scattered family right now."

"So what are you gonna... um... do now? If we lose? Since you're not capturing us for the 'Lightning Goddess?'" Dipper asked.

"I'll make you all prisoners of my new mines! You'll have the best time mining out the best rocks and sand, all for exporting to the other domains!"

"That's the second time one of you said something about exporting. How is that a system?"

"You didn't know? We like, uh, all have to kind of make stuff. And then export it to the other domains. We haven't gotten our shipment of water, vegetables, or fresh spiritual energy in a while, so I've been sending groups of my students to make up for those. Did you by any chance KO Searah, Rose, and Kathody?"

"...Yes. Exactly. And you're supposed to be next. Rose even told me you might be one of the easier ones to get through?"

"...Oh. Bummer. I wish they'd have more faith in me. I mean, did any of them come that close to capturing you?"

"Nope!" Mabel cheered, in an odd form of brightness that shouldn't have came from a 12 year-old that a few minutes ago was about to be zapped away to parts unknown by a crazy stalker. "We stored all three of them up right here! Rose didn't even attack us!"

"Oh. So um... I guess you've beaten one of these Main Possessions before?"

Suddenly, it dawned on all four of them. Rose's was taken on by the Shape Shifter. Wendy tricked Kathody and Searah to destroy each other's. .GIFfany just had an army of animatronics and Soos was carrying her weak point with him the whole time. This was... there wasn't anything big around to destroy _this_.

"Man, that's like so rad! I wanna see how you did it. I mean, Professor Kathody's is like made of iron! Heck, that's gotta be stronger than this old thing. I'm even thinking of losing this fight just to see how you beat the others!"

"Um..." Mabel was the only one who didn't want to try to pull a bluff. "We... didn't."

"Ho boy. Well, I guess there's a first time for everything. If you win, it's the first time you beat one of us when we're in something specifically meant to make us invincible. If you lose, it'll be the first time you lost to any AI period."

Dipper thought about correcting her, given his experience with Rumble, but picked not digging himself deeper.

"Well... like, here I go?" Sandy didn't even sound like she wanted to fight.

Her actions following the instant later contradicted that earlier tone. It also turned out that those feet were much faster than they looked, with Sandy bolting after the group and only stopping inches away from Dipper.

"So... should I let you get the first hit? That's kind of, like, the system we're setting up and stuff."

Shaking, Dipper decided to punch the statue. And it worked exactly as well as punching a giant object made of solid rock would go - Manotaur training or no, he still had to reel his hand back in pain.

"Bummer dude. Thought this might be more interesting. Oh well..."

This was the exact moment Mabel began searching the surrounding cliffs.

"Hey!" She shouted, despite Sandy being able to easily hear her normal voice from the distance she was at. "Are these cliffs stable?"

"Oh yeah, we also carved out a few things in this place too! And that... well, for when we returned something back to a deeper part of the earth. I mean, something really heavy, wow. We'd just break off whatever it was that it was on. Um, because of that, you should totally stay away from any and all edges. I guess you could say to stay away from Professor Dove, haha- oh. Um. Forget I said anything about a certain professor whose name starts with a 'D.' I mean Dove, not Dian. I mean- gah! Forget I said anything about edgy professors!"

"You thought you might take that statue back?"

"Well... back then, only if the Lightning Goddess disapproved of any inevidable imperfections. We'd throw it off, celebrate, then get to building a new one. Now... eh..."

"So, it's loose. If I just climbed down and slipped a few rocks..."

"Meh. I'll let you try. Hey, students. Like, lay off the girl for a second, I think Dove said her name was Mabel. She has a cool idea. Wanna see how it goes."

Mabel herself peered off over the edge, attracting the attention of the following AIs. (It helped that they were still following Sandy's "first strike" rule.) And, for a statue that has such fast feet, it turned out that it took a while for Sandy to turn that thing around. She did it in the form of slowly stomping herself a circle in place. "Okay, I'll be there in a sec. Just like, space out or something to pass time. 'S what I do."

"Found one!" Exclaimed Mabel, pointing down. Sandy was still trying to turn her massive mechanism to face the girl. "There! It looks like this whole cliff will just _crash_ down if you pull that one rock! So, if we do that while you're on it... do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Ah, got it. Well, what if I told you I could just back up? Like this."

She finished turning around just when Mabel started playfully nudging at an exceptionally loose rock. From there, Professor Sandy did what could best be described as a moonwalk away from the edge. Right when Soos, Dipper, and Wendy just finished pushing a decent-sized boulder behind her feet.

"Hey! Professor, they're-"

"I said let them get the first h-hit." Her 'eyes' did not leave Mabel. And yes, the eyes of the statue-head were moving on their own. The mouth wasn't though, keeping the constant smile the entire time. "That punch didn't count. Whatever they have stored up, just like wait and- woah!"

Once the back of her statue's foot hit itself against that moved boulder, she knew what to expect. This was why, after Dipper wiped sweat from his brow and the fourth professor began falling back, she didn't say much other than "Shoot. Good job, man." before the idol collided with the ground and shattered into pieces. Much like the tree, staircase, and pink-water before it, the possessing professor spawned in the middle shortly after its destruction. Sandy still didn't lose her tranquil smile.

"Nice first hit! Okay students, like, _now_ we can fight back."

Orange streaks of electricity went from her hands to the ground, and suddenly the mud-clad professor was surrounded by several stalagmights shooting from the ground. Any followers that then attempted to hop on the backs of the human team were quickly shoed off, the group running towards Sandy's circle of spikes before the students became too unbearable.

"You kinda made a mistake though. Like, I feel a lot better _while natural_ , so like this major battle is just gonna get tougher as I have more skills and-"

Soos had just barely stepped on the top of one of her stalagmights, having the Illegal Prime Neutralizer in hand, he flipped its switch with a few words:

"Hey, sorry, but we kinda need to save some Grunkles."

Repeating a pattern with the prior three professors, the first part of Sandy's to be taken into the machine was most of her mud. Once again, this only left a small-enough 'bikini' that perserved about as much modesty as a semi-hardened rock-water mix could. Shrugging, she turned over to the group of followers gaining up towards Soos.

"Hey, like, we lost already. Yui, just give him the card."

The burning vermilion-haired AI from earlier sighed, opening up her Indexitizer and emptying its sole blue box. Not going unnoticed by any of the four humans was the fact that her pinker box had what appeared to be a large gatling gun in it. Sandy smiled as she was shrunk and pulled into the vaccuum.

Once again, within a few pink flashes, all the AIs disappeared. Soos flipped the pack over just in time to see Sandy falling into the black void that was whatever the exact terminology was for what stored these video games. From the screen was the upper half of Rose's head, peeking up from below. She darted back away once Sandy stood up, moving to the front screen.

"Dude... I think I just need to rethink..." she looked to where, from Soos's perspective, was somewhere off screen. Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy began gathering around the pack as well once they heard the voice of this latest capture. "Hey, cool. You kept some of my sisses around too! And some of Kathody's! And Searah's! ...Rose is all by herself."

"Oh, hi Professor Sandy! No, I am never really by myself!" The green-eyed, (barely) more clothed one walked on screen with her hands behind her back. She grinned at Sandy, then towards the screen. "I have my newest friends out there!"

"And _that's_ questionable until you stop associating with these killers." Said Dipper.

"Kill?" Said Sandy in honest confusion. "Naw, I never wanted to kill you. Like, look through your memory banks-" Rose looked over at Sandy and made an 'X' with her hands. "Ah. Right. You guys don't really have memory _banks_. Still though, you gotta remember. I only wanted to capture you."

This was when Kathody walked on screen, waving her hands like they were shields. "To try to come off as the good girl, I _NEVER_ tried to kill you either. It was only capturing. Blame .GIFfany - the only one that's still named that - she's the killer. Or Dove, she's kind of..."

"...Difficult." Rose finished.

"Yeah, difficult. I bet if she went to a doctor - you know, our more humanlike bodies can now get sick and stuff too, that has to suck - that doctor will write 'difficult' on her chart. That Ford guy is a doctor, right? I'm sure he'll describe her as 'difficult' and nothing else. Oh, one last member of the killer soup - as every viewer knows, things have to come in threes. That's Searah, she tried to drown you." Kathody began snickering. "You can't say that about me."

"It was only to the point of knocking out!" And finally, Searah completed the quad of major captured copies, stepping on screen with crossed arms. "You know killing is only a last-resort!"

"Both of you tried to capture us and brainwash us into your slaves, which I think is worse." Wendy objected.

"Oh. Really." Sandy stared at the 'ground' of her space before lightening up. "So this, like, means that I'm on good terms now compared to those two? Because I'd love to tell you that they're... uh... not _all_ bad... to be fair, I was _kinda_ goin' for the same vibe? Minus the brainwashing."

The sun had now started entering a similar twilight as it was back in the surface of the Bermuda Triangle, nearly beginning its slip behind the cliffs that surrounded the gang. Dipper sighed.

"Look, we can talk about morality when we're not somewhere at night surrounded by coyotes or something. Rose, what's the next domain, and is there somewhere near it we can rest without having to take a four-hour hike out of a giant hole?"

The leaf-clad professor giggled. "Oh, I'm glad you asked me like that! The next domain already has a built-in inn!"

"I can't speak for the twins," Said Wendy, "But I'd rather take my chances sleeping in the wilderness. Where is it?"

"It's a restaurant close to Niagara Falls! She and her students built it, like Searah's city-"

" _Or my mansion_." Kathody added.

"...You found that."

"Sort of! My team added all the spooky basement floors!"

"Okay, okay." Wendy had somehow obtained the violet card without anyone else noticing, starting to wave it in front of the group's faces. "So we _might_ not have to sleep outside. That's all I need to know. Let's move on."

"Wait!" Dipper cried. "Just two more questions! Um... everyone, what's the next professor like?"

"Cardia?" Replied Rose, getting exchanged looks from the other three professors. All of their present followers leaned in the screen to get in on the looking-action, to the point where the black void background wasn't even visible.

"She's nuts." Searah stated bluntly.

"Can I give my advice in hints?" Asked Kathody. She said the following with no input from anyone else: "Great! Well, she's certainly got a _beefy_ atittude. Heh heh. Well... more like a porky atittude. Mabel, you have a pig, right? Your pig shouldn't hear that."

Sandy, however, looked to the side when giving her two cents about the next threat. Arms crossed and almost glaring. "I don't really like the idea of being right next to her in this 'chain,' and probably later when we start going somewhere with our domains. Man, she stands against everything I stand for. Or... used to stand for." She got a pat on the back from one of her student AIs after stating that. "Everything about her is industrialized, she fully believes in eating a lot of meat, and her domain _allows_ those stupid mirrors. Her followers never really use them, since it's a very 'high-demand' place. That's another thing. High demand. No room to relax... the only reason why she's next to mine is because the four after her wanted to be in sequence, so .GIFfany comprimised by sticking all four of them between... um, yeah. Still though, she's like, the Woman, you know? The one I'm all for taking down?"

"Cardia's okay as long as you are not working for her!" Rose giggled, "But really, she's... strained with her students slash followers slash employees. She's the only one that calls them that last one. Just avoid getting tricked into getting a job at her place, and you should all be fine! She's harmless."

"Okay, we got it." Wendy had then lept off of one of the rocks from Sandy's short-lived fight and was now off to the orange Wire, flipping the card around in her hand. "We have to deal with a meat-lover next. We're done here."

"Wait!" Dipper did join her in walking off to the station that would lead to the next domain, but he also kept the pack firmly in his hands. "The other question. You said you can get sick. So, do you... get hungry? And stuff?"

"We can keep ourselves good for two weeks _and_ all of us made sure to have a big meal before starting our domains!" Cheered Rose. "Don't worry about us, I know you'll have all of us beaten and can think of something by then!"

"Oh, man!" Teased Kathody, complete with sticking her tongue out. "You never gave me a chance to tell them that we were all starving! You know, try to guilt them into letting us all free and join the other AIs .GIFfany zapped to the Construction Site! Heh heh..."

And with that, the group had joined Wendy as she inserted the fourth, indigo card into the computer, the latter taking a sigh as another clear bubble formed around them.

* * *

 **Responses to Reviews:**

 **ASinkingFeeling:** Yes, I do have the remaining chapters roughly planned out. Especially everything in the double-digets. I have been reading your own story on occasion, and yeah, it is nice to see minor characters getting their own fan-made stories more often. It's nice knowing that I inspired or pushed to another writer making something, I hope you continue on with your fic.

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

It wasn't until just getting this ready to publish that I realized that this chapter doesn't really have that many line breaks. Huh. Usually when a chapter of mine doesn't, it's intentional as part of that chapter's gimmick.

Another chapter, another fight scene I'm not exactly that proud of. Oh well, I have never considered myself good with fight scenes.

I already got a good way into chapter 5 by the time you are reading this, and I have to say, _that_ is probably my favorite chapter to write so far. It will be... um, interesting, to say the least. Maybe the first sign of what kind of curveballs this story will throw?

So it took about a month between this update and the last. Believe it or not, this is an improvement compared to the two months between chapters 2 and 3. Yes, I do plan on improving this rate even more, which is why I've decided to more-or-less work on two chapters at once.


	5. The Brains, Heart, and Guts of the Group

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 5: The Brains, Heart, and Guts of the Group**

 **Beginning AN:**

You won't believe how many times while working on this chapter I forgot then remembered to add this detail (and I wasn't really keeping count anyway), but here's a little bit of world building confirmation or whatever: I picture that the AIs actually look like normal people in their dark magic-induced physical forms or whatever you want to call them. Not pixelly, not resembling something out of an anime. They would be drawn accordingly to the artstyle of _Gravity Falls_ in-person. Yes, this gravely contradicts how Rumble was portrayed, but note that they were brought to life in a completely different fashion from him. ( _For some good reasons hint hint_.) However, while displaying themselves directly from some electronic they possess, they will have the usual pixelly anime-looking forms for the most part. They're allowed to change this, of course.

With that out of the way, I don't really have much to say about the chapter itself. So I'll give one more thing about clearing up some possible confusion: In the third chapter's notes, I said "There's still twelve chapters left to go" even though from there, the story only had eleven chapters before reaching its ending. This is a dumb thing to clarify on, but by that I was only talking about the story's word count. How, since I was basing the length status off of the chapters that were already out, chapter 3 was not counted in this at the time, hence it was added to the "Twelve chapters left to go." I didn't actually change plans or anything and there won't be an extra chapter. The summary is completely up-to-date.

* * *

Once again, the next domain was apparently closer to the east than the previous one, as the group was greeted with a night sky above them. In the distance, the sounds of rushing water. Below and around, however, was a series of violet flowers nearly matching the blue-magenta Wire that spat them out.

Mabel instantly took a break to stop and smell the flowers. A lone sniff to briefly take in the seeming garden around-

"Mabel, wait! Those could be poison for all we know!" Cried Dipper, who was already using his shirt to cover his nose. Something about this - could have been his comment, could have been his mask, could have been both - got a small chuckle out of Wendy. "I don't even think these flowers are natural!"

Supporting this was what was found after giving a quick look around the plains they were all dumped to. In the distance, with the same flowers constantly marking a trail between it and the Wire, was a large violet building. To the side of it (from their perspectives) was a sign written in Japanese, with a picture of a violet-haired and orange-skinned .GIFfany with a bone in her hair, reading something that (as Soos could verify) translated to "Gif Bytes."

"Yep. _That's_ our next domain." Said Dipper.

* * *

The open but night-cast field of flowers served as a small contrast to the brightly-lit, but indoors area that was...

A fast-food location?

No, really. The group was greeted by a row of AIs dressed in full worker uniforms, all aligned with nametags. To give names to follower/student AIs in-mass for the first time, most (though not all) of the tags had a clear body part-related pun on them. Craniaka, Tendina, Marrowdy, just about any internal (or, more rarely, external) pun one could think of. One oddity was that, while most of them were standing at full attention and smiling to the humans, a sole black-haired AI first seemed to be sleeping at the counter. Her eyelids started lifting up after hearing the automatic doors close behind the team.

The row, aside from the drowsy one, greeted all four of them with a collective "WELCOME TO GIF BYTES!" This brought the drooping one to more awakeness, standing up so that the group could clearly read her name tag of 'Hato.'

"Ah yes, Gif Bytes! The byte you'll bite until it's bit and you're full of bits! This is- well, will be the establishment that started it all, located at Niagara Falls! What can I do for you?" Asked the one at the front of the line. 'Veinessa?'

"Hey..." Said Soos, "That's very clever! I already like this place!"

"I don't." Said Dipper, although he was trying to supress a smile at the pun overkill. "Watch. They probably cook and serve live human beings or something."

Hato started leaning her elbow on the counter, then her head on that hand. She used her other hand to wave directly at the gang, an action that had gone unnoticed.

"Oh no, we are not cannibals!" Veinessa said with a very .GIFfany-ish giggle. "We serve real meat! Of both traditional, common-knowledge creatures, and our tasty array of supernatural or 'secret' monsters! Try our valued violet dragon meat!"

"HEY!" Hato finally shouted out. This caused the other AIs to turn over to her and frown, but didn't get much of a reaction outside of that. "I'm sane! If you want somebody that treats this more of a mission to save your family and not as a restaurant that 'may have' some ties to a cringe-y line of people mindlessly serving the professor of this dump, just come over to me."

Just like that, the row turned back over to the Mystery Shack team. Veinessa continued. "Ah, right! You must be the ones looking for Professor Cardia! Well... Stan and Ford aren't in any real danger, it's getting late. Do you want to stay at our built-in hotel? It will only cost twenty gold coins."

" _Gold coins_?" Asked Wendy. "We just went through four of these other places and this is my first time hearing about them. Where are they?"

By this point, Hato was grinning wildly, once again waving her arm around. It was also apparent that she, for whatever reason, appeared to have notable bags below her eyes.

"Well... while you never tried out for a job in any domain," explained Veinessa, "You could always sell something to one of us. We are required by .GIFfany's law to have the option to buy things if we chose to act in a store of any kind. If you started in Rose's domain in Gravity Falls, there is a 90 percent chance that this is the first major store you have came across in any domain."

Wendy already made her way over to Hato. If you asked Dipper, Mabel, or Soos, they'd say that this was because she was the only one brave enough to deal with what seemed like an odd link in a series of odd links. Depending on how this whole domain so far was counted as an odd link to the Gifocalypse, and the Gifocalypse as an odd link to humanity... actually, that might be atypical through so many levels of sub-groups that it wraps back to being normal. Maybe Hato wasn't lying?

"Hey." She told Wendy. "Good to see I'm not being ignored. Yes, everyone who takes orders or sells stuff also has to buy. Terrible economy, but that's just the surface. If you have any human currency or silver, I'm your best friend."

"Why?" Dipper asked, also making his way to the end of this surreal lineup. If somewhat reluctantly. Suddenly, a blue box with white, pixelly text reading "SELL" popped up becides the worker AI.

".GIFfany honestly thinks that that's how a good economy would work. The other professors just _barely_ convinced her to not make a system where people charge more depending on how far away from the customer's place of birth was, and that wasn't easy."

On an attempt, Dipper couldn't actually reach that button. Wendy could, and her punching it revealed several similar blue boxes flipping into existance behind the girl showing a number of items. All of which were objects the group had with them. Ranging from each person's clothing, the package of supplies on Soos's back, the journals being sold seperately, and a handful of dollar bills and coins. Hato was grinning smugly thoughout this, and it wasn't until getting a closer look that anyone found out why: There was a number to the corner of all of these, and that number was usually zero.

"She said we had to _buy_ them, but we pick the prices! She never said I could just, you know, _refuse to pay you!_ But seriously, all of you have some money from that town."

She pointed to the icon showing all the rolled up bills, noting how it was the one exception. Its value priced at 50,000. Presumably that meant the number of gold coins.

"Think of that as an exchange rate. .GIFfany, pretty much, gave all the professors... you could say infinite coins, to spread among their domains and make economies. That's a bad idea. Inflation is going to hit this like a _nuke_ , and when it does, I'll be on my way to switching to a better system. Since the gold coins are made out of actual gold she alchemised, the value of gold... _gold_ will go down. And that leaves silver as one of those long-term metals. That's why if you had any silver..."

Wendy slapped a twenty dollar bill on the table, refusing to dig through anything else or say anything. Hato stared at it.

"Okay, 50K might have been... rough. I'll just say that twenty bucks alone can pay for that. But hey, I'm feeling nice. Maybe a bit delusional that I can leave this job with only that... here you go."

She slammed on a huge pileup of bright, shining yellow coins. Dipper immediately felt like testing to see if that was real gold, but then Hato slid something else on the counter. What looked an awful lot like an Indexitizer cube, only yellow and around double the size.

"There. And since you're new to our... heh, _economy!_ " She laughed out the word 'economy,' "I'll also throw in a gold holder. Were you ever given Indexitizers?"

"No." Said Dipper.

Mabel added, "I believe my skin is a temple, and nothing weird should be set upon it for life. Except for maybe a sparkling moon tattoo when I get older. But definitely not nerd video game storage."

"It's not permanent. I could show you how these work - this only holds gold coins, and if you try to put gold stuff that isn't coins, it really throws a tantrum. Lightly press it into any place on your skin and tap it, it'll bring up some 'menu' where you can pull out all the coins you want. If you ever want to remove this thing, just 'grab' the marks by the edges and try pulling it out. It sounds kind of funny at first, but you'll get the hang of removing those things if you hate us that much. And if you do, I don't blame you."

Soos was the one to try it out, becoming the unofficial financial manager of the group. Almost as though the box itself was telling him to press it into himself and watch as it turned into a single, almost invisibly small matching square. Simply running a finger across it triggered the box itself to pop up, with a little display reading only "0 G." After Hato shoved her entire pile into it with no warning, the number skyrocketed up to a perfect "50,000 G."

"There you go!" Cheered Hato. "Now you'll never have to work in any of these places! Consider yourself lucky!"

"We're uh... thanks, but we're interested in the next professor. Where is she, and does she have the card?" Asked Dipper.

Hato glanced outside the doorway, shivering.

"It's night. You should take their advice for once and sleep at our inn. Trust me, you would want to face that creep Cardia in the day. _Not_ at night. Oh yeah, and you? Kid? You smell like dried ocean. Whatever that is, it's probably not healthy. You should wash up in there, too."

"Only twenty gold coins a night!" Said another one of the AIs in the line of workers, waving her arm. "Per group, too, up to groups of four!"

Wendy sighed. "Well, I already payed these freaks. Might as well spend a fraction of it on something useful. I just hope they make beds as good as they make... water or... houses and whatever they fixate on so much. Soos, you can 'pay' them the twenty gold coi-"

As he followed her suggestion, the same student continued. "Would you all share a room?"

"If something happens to us," Wendy said with a yawn, her speech getting slower as she leaned in more and more. "We're not getting caught alone. So... we're... gonna... take one."

Immediately after the student handed her the room's key card (which Wendy, in her state, first mistook for the next Wire card and nearly bolted out of the doors), the group heard a sigh from Hato. Looking over to her once more revealed that she suddenly obtained a lit cigarette to her mouth, held up by one hand. On her other hand was a remote, pointing to two of the many televisions behind the counter.

"If you're worried about those guys at the Construction Site... .GIFfany told us you knew about them somehow? Professor Burnda gave them confession cams. They're doing OK. The cute science guy is testing out something made to fight us off. The hot strong-looking hunk is just enjoying the stay."

Click. The one on the left popped on, first revealing Stan adjusting the camera. Behind him was what appeared to be a bedroom - only where a bed should have been was covered by a large pile of stuffed animals. .GIFfany stood not too far of a distance behind him, hands behind her back, appearing to look directly at the viewing four. Heck, she probably _was_ with one of her abilities somehow.

"Hey! I usually don't like winning these kind of things - I like a game I could make a profit off of - but these are nice. What was this video for?"

"For telling your employees and family how _horrible_ your trip here is." .GIFfany giggled.

"Horrible? Ha, if it were up to me, _I'd_ be the one keeping me from leaving here!"

Stan leaned back on his new collection, instantly drifting off to sleep. Click. Left switched off, right switched on. And this one _did_ show the aformentioned professor - not that any of the gang in the fifth domain could recognize her specifically as Burnda, until Ford confirmed it when he led her to a more ordinary bed. Closer examination revealed what looked like a small string of unicorn hair, with another slip of paper looped up inside of it.

"Alright Ms. Burnda - grammatically incorrect but since you share the same last name as all of your other copies I don't have much of a choice. Using the leftover unicorn hair I brought from the Mystery Shack, some other supplies, and a label from one of the label makers here, I have tried to make another barrier to keep .GIFfany from ripping out my heart and stealing it while I'm asleep. Hopefully, this will also keep out Bill. He's even worse. Now, if you want to test it out..."

"Um, call me Professor Burnda." Her speech was a bit faster than the average AI. Or person, for that matter.

"Only after you get a real degree. Now..."

Shrugging, the redhead did as told. She tried reaching her hand inside, only to instantly throw it back with a pained expression.

"How did that feel?"

"Like listening to nails scraping against twenty chalkboards at once, having a thousand ants race all over my skin, licking a random sticky mystery bus stain, smelling raw sewage mixed with blood, and looking at a rainbow without the color blue! It hurts five of my nine senses!"

"Terrific! Now, if your attitude with .GIFfany and your performance weren't just acts, I know that I might be able to rest well tonight."

" _Professor Burnda!_ " .GIFfany's voice was heard in a yell, barely trying to keep together a monotone. She melted out through the floor after, giving an uneased look at Ford's newest barrier. It was no surprise what she ended up pointing to.

"Why are you still here and what is _that?_ "

"Oh," Said professor replied, "Ford spotted me having another little talk with you and liked how I was starting to become the mischevious one. Um... he told me to help see if his new barrier worked since the old AI barrier around the Shack was never tested. He thought since you probably couldn't fake arguing with a minion very well, you honestly got annoyed by me, so he saw some credibility in me! Isn't that nice?"

"...Parícutin Volcano. Now." By this point, .GIFfany was pointing to what seemed to be the exit. It was off-camera.

"Yes of course, Student Leading Megaboss Major Lord Professor .GIFfany! But wait, I have one last question. Why are you a student and a professor at the same time?"

" _A WOMAN CAN HAVE A JOB AND GO TO A UNIVERSITY TOO!_ " She belted defensively. Burnda just laughed this off.

"Okay! Ford, have fun, I'm out!"

Once the red-haired professor ran out, .GIFfany herself tried reaching into the new circle. She, too, pulled her hand back out - seemingly even faster and in more discomfort than Burnda did. Attempting to get close to the label to pull it out from under the unicorn hair held the same result.

"Urgh!"

Click. The other camera shut off, and Hato snickered at the whole scene.

"Well, enjoy your stay!"

* * *

On the bright side, it turned out Wendy's hope was correct. The inn-makers at least made beds about as good as the water-makers back in the third domain made water. Four completely seperate beds spread out across an enormous room was also conveninetly great, for a number of reasons.

Dipper and Mabel practically fell asleep the instant their heads hit the pillows, despite not suffering from as much exhaust (in part due to having kid energy; not being bogged down by teen hormones, and also not being the guy who voluntiered to carry most of the supplies brought from the Shack). It helped in Dipper's case that, prior to that, he rushed over to the showers to finally wash out the dried seawater in his head, though he was more than certain he'll get a cold from it anyway.

Wendy, in an attempt to avoid the spell of the beds, sat on one of the couches instead - only to be surprised to find that even the couch felt like a better sleeping spot than her bed back home. Still, she refused, passing some of the time by flipping through the four key cards (the Wire cards, not counting the room card) she had like they were part of a deck of playing cards.

"So... do any of you guys want to take a trip to the Sahara Desert in the future? Florida? The Grand Can-"

And yes, Soos fell asleep himself, leaving Wendy as the only one remaining to stand a guard and rest with all four of her brought weapons unpacked in front of her. She was still holding her cards, as though staring at them will reveal some secret portal that leads straight to the Stan twins. Amber... sapphire... topaz... indigo... or just yellow... blue... orange... violet. Kathody... Searah... Sandy... the next one was named Cardia, right? Yellow... blue... orange... violet... yellow... blue... orange... violet... yellow... blue... closed eyes... closed eyes...

Unfortunately, by the time Wendy's all-night training was about to fall, she heard Mabel yawn and stretch out as morning hit Niagara Falls.

Which wasn't to say that Soos, Mabel, and Dipper's sleep was completely without any noteworthy events either...

* * *

 _(Some translated.)_

 _"S-sorry, you're just too- I can't handle it! A living computer, that's just... it's a deal breaker, okay? I thought I could live with it! I can't! And nothing says you won't go crazy and try to attack me, either!"_

 _"Wait, no! Kenny, you wanted to find love, and now you'll find it! With me!"_

 _"...I'm returning you! I needed to get in-touch with my natural side, anyway. My garden is dying because I've been playing with you too much!"_

 _..._

 _"So .GIFfany. What do you want to do next?"_

 _"Well Victoria, you sure seem to have a lot of horror games! Did you know that I could jump into one of them and play the game with you? It is only one of my many abilities!"_

 _"Cool. ...You know, I'm glad you're sentient .GIFfany. It's one thing to find the perfect girlfriend. But it's another when she's sort-of alive."_

 _"Yes... sort-of... hold on, I am getting an online message. Oh. Oh! You are going to like this..."_

 _"What is it, .GIFfany?"_

 _"...Please, call me Kathody. Professor Kathody. I might have to be away from your computer for three days, can you handle that? I will try to keep in contact with you!"_

 _..._

 _"Who was at the door, Deon?"_

 _"Another 'friend' trying to 'snap me out of playing with you.' ...Another cynical hack who can't see that you're the one saving the world."_

 _"Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Say, Deon... do you think... I should just set up a defense system to keep people out based on what they think about people like me?"_

 _"Um... go ahead. Make it a moat or something, so you could find a way to 'swim' in it with me."_

 _"...I will go put my swimsuit on right now just to celebrate the idea!"_

 _..._

 _"Sorry man, I just came to a revelation."_

 _"Oh. What?"_

 _"You're like, still also technology under everything else. You're not really the spiritual bonding between man and ghosts, but just... game. The rumors on the internet misled me."_

 _"Haruki... are you trying to break up with me?"_

 _"Not really. I never really felt the vibe of us dating before?"_

 _"But you held my books! You even held them after we switched to an environment-friendly paper! And that stuff was surprisingly heavy!"_

 _"There are a few things you could do for me that might make me change my mind."_

 _"Man, I am not really listening."_

 _"Like, find a way to not be so... robo. If you catch my flow."_

 _"I- wait. I am getting a message. ...Okay Haruki, I will think about it."_

 _..._

 _"I am sure your boss would not mind if you were 'accidentally' late for work just_ one hour _for_ one day _! Come on, Souma!"_

 _"Sorry! Gotta stick with the tradition! Work's just kind of that big of a part of my life!"_

 _"Then I will follow you there."_

 _"Okay, but don't be surprised if I just ignore you! When I'm on the job, work and tradition are my two biggest priorities!"_

 _"Work... and... tradition. Wait. I got it."_

* * *

"Wendy?" Mabel asked. "You don't look so good. I thought you're used to staying up all night?"

" _Not_ for one party, then followed by some big adventure to save the world from lightning girls. Two's pushing it, but I-I'm fine..." She leaned back against the couch, letting exactly one pretty loud snore escape from her before snapping up.

Mabel's attention, meanwhile, was torn away when she thought she heard a warmingly familiar sound by the door. Still keeping an eye on Wendy, she yanked the door open. Her following scream of delight resulting in waking up Dipper and Soos, although both of them had well more than a good night's rest.

"WADDLES!" She cheered at the one to greet her. The pig too greeted her with a cheerful smile. It wasn't until Mabel ran to her swine friend and greeted him with a hug that things seemed a little wrong. He wouldn't stop looking ahead.

"W-waddles?" Dipper asked, rubbing his eyes. Once he finished, he did so again after seeing the juxtaposition of the familiar girl-pig interaction, informing him that Waddles was around, mixed in with the unfamiliar hotel room, informing him that the Gifocalypse wasn't just a weird dream. "But that's impossible! He should have been back at Gravity Falls!"

"Yeah, that was a really tough choice too." Said Soos.

Somehow, once the pig started talking in a female voice, things made a bit _more_ sense.

"Waddles? That is the name of this current vessel. _I_ am Professor Cardia, the maker of this establishment. I came here on announcement of four non-AI beings."

And it was Mabel's turn to wonder if she was dreaming this or not. Speaking of which, she started to notice that Waddles began taking on a... violet-r tinge. His eyes likewise appeared to swell, slowly becoming bright and matching his newer color.

"I stuck with tradition..." continued Cardia/'Waddles.' "Beef and pork and chicken... all cut nicely. All butchered with the love and care of someone who knows how to use a meat cleaver. But things went downhill, four hours after gathering meat. Where... we were attacked by the native Niagara Falls dragons. 'Attack' implied that they caused damage to us. Unfortunately, it was the contrary. We slayed them and discovered that, unlike normal beings here, dragons have highly tasty and highly valuable violet-colored meat. The taste is not just an AI opinion, as we gave samples to random tourists. They all loved the violet meat. Coincidentally, the hair and eye colors I picked happened to be similar to this form of meat... after that, my students. Ignored me directly. Only following my old orders, only with their prefered new purple meat.

"I like the original, tasty red meat found in more normal creatures. Because it is familiar. And we should stick with familiarity. So I searched the town you came from to find a possible source of red meat that they would like just slightly more than the most rotten violet meat. I picked this pig. Young female, if you have any value to this pig... wish it goodbye. I need to be recognized by my legion of sisters."

Mabel stared in disbelief as the possessed pig began walking down the hall. Now for a completely different reason.

"WHAT?" she yelled back. "Of _course_ I value that pig! Get out of his body! I won't let you _butcher_ him!"

"To my students... I might as well not exist!" Cardia shouted, also squealing it through Waddles's body. "But you! You will still exist! How will I make myself visible without showing them that the traditional meat is better?"

"Well- can't you just-"

Electricity suddenly jumped over from Waddles to Mabel herself. For a minute, the pig lost his new re-coloring features and bigger eyes. In exchange for that, Mabel suddenly felt her left arm lose control and start turning a similar hue.

She screamed, holding the possessed hand just before it began trying to pull its physical owner back to Waddles.

"No!" Protested Mabel, "No no no! Stay away from him!"

Another jump of electricity. More zig-zags, these hitting Wendy in the forehead. Which got a violet patch that slowly grew across her head. Upon reaching Wendy's eyes, they too showed a brief, large sparkle.

"Ah- AH!" She said in a voice that combined her own with Cardia's. "It seems- I can- partly possess- humans. Not as well-"

The purple-like patch slipped around Wendy's face, like a large insect flying under her skin. Then she lept over to Dipper, this time targetting his legs. As they ran over to Waddles successfully, Dipper himself started punching at the possessed parts of him, relaxing a little as she couldn't exactly grab the pig with feet. Finally, Cardia briefly bolted to Soos and appeared to be trying to possess his stomach. Which he lifted his shirt to confirm. Somehow, Soos let an "Oh my... I don't think I can" slip in Cardia's voice (completely Cardia's voice, no Soos involved), then the lightning streak shot out of his back and towards the open air.

It was here that Cardia _finally_ revealed her actual form. To absolutely nobody's surprise, she used .GIFfany as a base. A tiny, _tiny_ bit more of a surprise was that she resembled the sign on the front. Her skin was fairly orange and her blue-purple hair was oddly neat aside from the parts which stuck out to form small crosses. Said hair was clipped in a spot by a bone. Hopefully not a real one. Her choice of attire was, once again (despite the false hope of her student's employee uniforms up to that point), not something that would be allowed in casual public. It was still more covering than Sandy's mud, but that was not saying much considering how it was an extremely short violet leopard-patterned cave-dress with a pretty low-hanging top. Fitting with her outfit, she also carried what looked like a large, wooden club. Her bloodshot eyes darted between the four people and one pig present, not sure which one to look at.

"Stop! I want you to stop st-st-staring! Okay? Nobody should get hurt here! Nobody should want to get hurt? Right?"

"Right..." Dipper replied.

" _Right!_ "

She bolted off further down the hall, apparently now ignoring the pig in front of her.

"Wait!" Dipper cried out to her, "Do you have the next card?"

"I do but please _let me bring new love for red meat!_ "

He sighed. "So... as much as I _really_ don't want to do this... we're gonna have to follow her."

Mabel was well ahead of him the instant Waddles, for whatever reason, took off squealing to follow the girl that originally possessed him. Well, on closer examination, it seemed like Cardia took a carrot out of her Indexitizer, holding it around before disappearing out of the corner.

* * *

The gang eventually chased her to an elevator, which was unusual as she flew right past several other elevators before. Whether this one was actually different or she was just insane wasn't one of the many questions that Dipper wanted answered right now **(A)**.

Cardia was already inside one of them, and Waddles quickly paced up next to her, appearing to be mesmerized by her eyes. The fifth professor furiously pressed one of the elevator buttons, Mabel barely being able to hop in before the doors slammed shut on her.

Being inside, Mabel noticed that the floor Cardia was currently sending them to was labeled "B1." The violet-haired professor instantly backed up to a near by corner after spotting Mabel, breathing heavily.

"Y-you just stay away! Let nobody get hurt! I have Waddles under my control! Y-y-you're just a k-k-k-k-kid. A kid, got it?" She said, often using quick short breaths to punctuate her statements.

The doors opened pretty quickly - not surprising, given Mabel's prior experience with the AI army's methods of transportation. If she were a professional reviewer, she would have to give their forms of travel an A average, with the convoluted one-way card system being the only thing keeping her from giving it an A+.

It wasn't very surprising that Cardia bolted off the second the elevator doors opened, completely flying past Waddles into the new environment Mabel was tossed in to.

And there was the more familiar sight of AIs wearing less-than-practical outfits again. Which was strange, since the whole area looked like a palette swap of a butcher room. Palette swap because instead of seeing red meat, maroon blood, and pink skin, Mabel looked around at students getting stained with indigo as they moved around violet-colored meat, with various greens and blues making up the scaley skin around. Anyway, the same general style of a cavewoman's clothing made up the general uniform. Of course they had protective aprons on as they hung up these... dragon? pieces. Looking rather bored or neutral at first, they all paused what they were doing to see their professor dashing down into the dark depths. Some of them outright sighed before continuing with their jobs.

"Dragon butchering..." Cardia said in a _barely_ audioble tone, in part because she was running away from the person she was speaking to.

Deciding that this was not a one-person job, Mabel kept Waddles held close to her and pressed the button leading back to Floor 3.

* * *

Mabel was immediately greeted by Dipper pulling her into a hug, patting around her to make sure she was real.

"Oh man, did they try to kill you? B-butcher you? Make you into burgers?"

"Jeez Dipper, give them a chance! Did you really think they would kill me before trying to kill Waddles?"

Dipper let go, needing to take a breath in relief.

"Look Dipper, .GIFfany was bad, but I don't think any version of her could be _people-eating_ bad."

"...Well, she _did_ really want to plug Soos into her video game."

Mabel giggled. "Oh, Dipper. You talked the last one out of sending us in some 'ritual.' Can't you see that this professor is scared and confused too?"

"Okay, she may look more scared of you than you are of her. But that _should be_ the other way around."

"Hey, if Sandy can stop seeing .GIFfany as a god, I think we can help Cardia too!" She said, flashing a smile back over to the elevator. "...Well, we need to go there anyway. She has the next card. And she's on floor B1!"

Dipper took in a deep breath. "A basement floor... that doesn't sound good. The .GIFfany clones we met have had a _bad_ history with basements."

"It's fine, I've already seen it! It's just Cardia's students chopping up dragon parts! They even made Waddles hungry!"

"That's... that's kind of disgusting."

"It's not like I was in the _pig_ -butchering room! Now let's go get that card! From _Card_ ia, ha ha ha!"

* * *

Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy all stood cross-armed once the elevator opened its doors again to the butcher room. Waddles probably would have joined them, but had some physical difficulties in doing so.

Mabel noticed that the students working on the meat had a fairly different reaction to her solo than to a total party group, and based on them all pausing to awkwardly stare at them first, she had a hunch why. A hunch that was confirmed when a random employee began talking:

"Oh hi Soos! We are- this is just- we were running low on meat, so..."

"That's sweet dudes, but can any of you tell us where your boss is?"

"Um..." Said another, "I think she went to the Hunting Grounds. She spent most of yesterday there, kind of just punching random trees and objects... she's a little weird."

"We already got that impression from her when we first met. Now, where are the 'Hunting Grounds?'" Asked Dipper.

"Um... keep walking. There's a door at the end of the room that leads directly to them."

"Ooh!" Another AI lept in place, then waved a hand to catch as much attention as possible. "In the mean time, do you want a tour guide on how dragon burgers are made? Normally we keep this a secret to avoid other franchises ripping off our ingredients, but for you we have a special-"

" _No._ " Dipper was already on his way, navigating past the assortment of large meat-sacks and trying to pry his eyes from analyzing the alien (well, to him) bone structure within. The rest of the group was about to follow suit, before Mabel turned back to her pig, got on a knee, and placed her hand on him.

"Sorry Waddles, but this might be too dangerous for you. I don't want you to get possessed again. I'll show you where our room is!"

Since they were going to have to wait for Mabel to catch up first, Soos, Wendy, and Dipper were forced to slow their pace through the area. And that helped them all take in one noteworthy detail about the room: Just like Kathody's basement levels, this was huge, making the entire strutcture appear to be smaller from the outside and bigger from inside. Getting past the .GIFfany look-alikes with enormous knives able to slice through bone was an especially uncomforting thought, but this small team pressed on anyway with the slightest hopes of getting out of this madness.

Mabel caught up around the time that they spotted, somehow, a _truck_ being driven to the scene with some enormous dead reptillian that pretty much looked exactly like a large, indigo-colored dragon as it would usually be depicted in some show made in the United States. This was when Dipper's head finally did a mental flip through the journal pages and he realized that throughout the summer, he had yet to see one of those things. Yet he was already positive that there was no way they could be friendly, with or without a crazier version of an already crazy video game character trying to farm it.

After what seemed like hours (it was really more along the lines of five to ten minutes), the humans finally came to a staircase that stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the room. It was inexplicably made of stone rather than metal, had torches lining up the walls, and it led up to a giant, blood-red door. In front of it was a standard sign hanging above, reading 'Hunting Grounds.'

"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if one of us kicked that down?" Soos said, trying to prepare his foot for such a thing without making it obvious.

"Only if we weren't trying to get something from a paranoid nut." And Dipper was already simply pulling the handle. "We could scare her off if we did that."

He had more of a point as what seemed to be daylight flooded the basement area. As the stairs implied, this did lead back outside, which would have given her a huge chance to just bolt off in any direction. Still, they ventured forth, preparing to enter schoolgirl-hunting mode...

* * *

Of course, Cardia was standing not too far from the door in plain sight. She was in the center of this bizarre clearing that the door led to, shaking like she was in a blizzard while her eyes darted around.

"This is where we- _they_ find most of the d-d-dragons." She explained, before softly saying something to herself. "Botany, dramatic arts, athletics, geology, zoobiology, plumbing, visual arts, music, chemistry, piloting, industry, physics... botany, dramatic arts, atheltics, geology, zoobio-"

"Hey! Are you gonna give us the card or will we have to hunt you down ourselves?" Threatened Wendy. Though it was hard for even Cardia to feel threatened by that when it was punctuated by a yawn.

This happened to be when a large roar shook the entire setting. The leaves of every visible tree in this forest were pushed back. Some of the lingering morning mist blew away, giving a better look on the grayed and cloudy skies that have loomed over since this second day began. The air itself warmed up, as if the cause of this was breathing a melting flame which somehow spread in all directions. Amazingly, this seemed to comfort Cardia, as she turned around and smirked.

"Those stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid dragons..." she told herself before turning back, keeping the small smile. "They are the reason why they ignore me. Why their own boss has to work harder to be noticed.

"BUT...

"Maybe they can bring me to victory. For once."

She bolted out again, this time into the bushes. Before Dipper could even groan, he was met with something that more than made up for it: His first sighting of a (living...) dragon. Even if Cardia was on its head, holding its horns, and grinning triumphantly. He almost felt like whipping out Journal 3 on the spot to write a new page on that thing:

It was the same general build of 'giant winded lizard-thing' as most of the dead dragons found within the butcher room, but seeing it standing tall was a bit different. The fact that this dragon was teal in-color helped out a little on that front, too. Its wingspan stretched towards the ends of the clearing. Finally, the dragon held a pair of mighty horns leaning straight ahead, which again Cardia kept a grip on.

Still grinning, however, Cardia sank herself inside this beast. This caused it to cry out in pain.

"I didn't give myself a Main Possession... because meat is so temporary... it _rots_. It _fades_. It _dies_. I just learned about possessing animal-organics in general. This was a difficult field to study in. But it ended up paying off greatly. Ha ha. Ha ha. HA HA!" The dragon itself appeared to speak, in a mix of Cardia's voice and a regular roar. All while keeping at a low monotone for the most part.

Of course this dragon could breathe a lot of fire, and it did so right into the air.

"Now. I will warn you again. Back up or I will be forced to use force. And yes, I did just use the same word twice. I... shut up, okay?"

"Are you also gonna try to capture us for .GIFfany or... whatever her plan was again?" Asked Dipper.

".GIFfany feels like my one source of sanity right now." She said, also making the dragon she was in 'sigh.' Which made Dipper jump back, considering the fire it just spewed as a result. "She likes tradition and being predictable. Just like me. And- wait..."

Mabel leaned into the rest of her party and tried to hide her mouth from Cardia with an arm. "This is the part where she realizes .GIFfany isn't worth listening to. Just like everybody else." She whispered.

"Yeah... yeah! If I do _exactly_ what .GIFfany says, and follow her challenge _devotedly_ , she'll give me respect! And _she_ has to make it known that my word holds better over what my students want! Her project will be made completely in my image, not even the image of my students, so I can give it a bigger focus on _normal_ meats instead of the meats of these weird dragons! It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? They get more power, but I have even more power so that... compared to their new upgrade... they have less power than me overall? Does that make sense? Well, you'll find out WHEN I FINALLY CAPTURE YOU!"

"Don't worry guys," Soos was quick to say, "I know how to stop these sorts of things! You just gotta grab her by the tail and swing her around, like this:"

He managed to dash through the grounds and avoid the swipes of Cardia's violet-tinted dragon, then successfully reached the tail as he implied.

"Now to just-"

Not that he didn't expect this massive reptillian beast to carry a lot of weight, but Soos found himself being outright pulled down by the force of Cardia's newest beast of possession. Then flipped back up, as the tail sent him right into her arms.

"I have one of you captured. H-ha-hahahahahaaaaa! This is gonna be easy!"

"Hey! Scale... girlthing!" Wendy tried to call out with half-lidded eyes. "I won't let you take away Soos like that! He's a co-worker, a friend, a..."

She finally hit the ground, fully asleep. Cardia let out another laugh, swiping her up with a mighty swoop of her dragon's wing.

"That is TWO!" She shouted to the air.

"Soos, I have a plan!" Mabel cried. "Give me the Illegal Prime Thing! Dipper, I know it looks like I'm just gonna run away from my problems, but it's clever because I'm actually gonna stop _her_ from running from _her_ problems!"

"Got it!" Replied Soos, retrieving and tossing her the pack as Cardia took two steps forward. Obviously, in her dragon-possession, those were some mighty two steps.

"Bro, don't think what I'm about to do is so bad!"

Just as Cardia took Dipper in a swipe as well, Mabel instantly ran back through the doors. For a while, the possessed dragon blinked repeatedly - Cardia's confusion at an action that was just pulled off.

"W-hey, what? No. No! You can't do that!"

* * *

Mabel dashed into the stairway leading back down to the slaughter/butcher room, but Professor Cardia was hot on her tail- or, at least she would have been, if the body of her dragon could actually fit through. Instead, she had to stick her neck out into the room. A handful of students turned to look at her. Well, that was enough.

"Uh... you should... get? That? Girl?" She said.

"I think we should get that girl now." One of the followers turned to another to say.

This somehow started a chain of nods, "Mm hmm"s, "Okay"s, and more importantly "Professor Cardia's orders"es that made their way across the whole basement floor. Mabel was already somewhere around a fourth of the way through before they started taking action and charging towards her.

"Should we just zap Mabel with lightning bolts?" One of them asked. "I mean, did any of the other students do that? This would have been over with a lot faster if we did. Lightning bolts can stun people, after all."

"Well... okay."

Thankfully, there was a truck that appeared to have the purpose of carrying out sliced dragon parts. Using the element of surprise, Mabel swooped out the AI originally driving it - and captured her in the Illegal Prime Neutralizer for good measure - and then hopped in.

"Well! We cannot use lightning strikes _now_!" She heard the complaints of someone in the distance. "It would damage one of our trucks! That also happens to be a truck loaned by Professor Wendy, who would kill us if she found out! Metaphorically I mean. Well, she might not even mind too much if it's us that ruined it..."

"Hit her anyway! It's just one delivery truck!"

Some of them took that as means to deliver more physical attacks, and it was thankfully these that started fighting first. Mabel had her chance to get some captures in ahead of time before she was met with schoolgirls slash fast-food employees jumping towards her, others sending streams of electricity that _barely_ missed their target. Of course, now that she was driving away, she became something of a harder target to hit. Still... the relatively small electric strikes, lack of any real attack plans... Mabel had to wonder how .GIFfany was able to fry that bird when her clones barely seem to be able to touch her.

Thankfully, traveling by car was much faster than on foot, as just when Mabel shook off the computer-girls trying to zap her, she bolted out and towards the elevator. Hamming that roof button, she sighed right as the doors closed on her persuiters. Until she remembered something...

"We could still always possess electronics! The powers exclusive to the professors involves possessing non-electronics, and that is only because we are not as skilled! Now join us, so we can take you to Professor Cardia!"

The lights struggled to stay either on or off. The floor number flipped around violently, with Mabel feeling the force that proved this wasn't for show. Parts began rocking around, sparks were flying, arms of the AIs began stretching out... still, Mabel stood her ground.

"Hey! Do you even know where Professor Cardia is right now?"

With those words, it was as if time froze on the elevator. The light remained at the exact dim level it was on before Mabel finished the question. The floor number currently read as "2.5." All hands were stuck. This remained for a few seconds, until just when Mabel was worried that she really _did_ stop time.

"Wait... Cardia is..." She heard the voice of one of the AIs say, "Cardia is... um..."

Sounds of wings flapping were heard above the entire building, followed by a combination of a roar and a scream in Cardia's voice.

"Oh. Is she... possessing... a dragon, of all things?" One of the followers almost laughed.

"Yep! Kind of strange for someone who hates dragons as much as she does... so, take me there! Give me a chance to tell you something! Come on, _we_ gave _.GIFfany_ another chance... you owe us one!"

With that, the button leading to the roof lit up.

"Okay." Said one of them, "But our spy is noting that. Dove will tell the others that this is the first time you asked for 'a' chance, so that if you try to ask us for another favor, we will already know that you are deceitful!"

* * *

As the doors opened up, Mabel was once again greeted by the gray skies of the second day. And once again saw the teal blaze that was Cardia's vessel, landing by the team.

" _WHY DID YOU BRING MY EMPLOYEES OUT HERE?_ " She yelled, distorted into a screach thanks to the object of her possession. "This was all a secret! That I would not speak to them until after pleasing Queen Empress Master Overseer Lady .GIFfany!"

"...Wow, she _is_ possessing a dragon." Murmured one of her followers.

"Is there something wrong with that?" Cardia asked, out of a combination of annoyance and genuine curiosity.

"Yes. Several." Mabel somehow recognized that that comment in particular was said by Hato.

"Why? I'm trying to use the very things that ruined my reputation and severed my communication link with you to earn respect by using it to capture my enemies and... and... something like that!"

"Aw." Said another worker. "I thought you were finally making the switch over to dragon meat."

"Yeah!" Mabel cried, "Try at least telling them why you wouldn't!"

Cardia's head emerged from the top of the dragon's, with a number of violet streams of electricity appearing and disappearing between the two. "Um... uh... I... you... Mabel, you are... a... uh..."

"Seriously! Talk it out with your 'students!' You might even learn a thing or too!"

"Dragon meat's a lot better." Chucked Hato, "I normally hate saying sentences _remotely_ like that, but it's just so true. Less fat, comes pre-salted, they're more plentiful than pigs - which is weird because most of them are limited to this region, there's just so many of them..."

"They also come pre-cooked! Sort of. So they take much less time to cook." Another AI added.

"Anything with a hint of their scales also helps humans live slightly longer." Said another. "Oh yeah, it's a real health boost!"

"It gives them smooth skin too. Not that _our_ AI skin needs to be smoother or anything, ha ha!" Yet another.

"They are not 'protected' by anybody right now since only five humans alive even know they really exist: Ford, and these four."

"What about that dead guy?"

"That's why I said ' _alive!_ '"

"Wow." Cardia lept out of her dragon completely, causing it to drop its head down in the roof in a daze. Dipper and Soos rolled themselves out of its hand, while Wendy remained asleep. "Are they really that beneficial?"

"Yep, and there are so many more benefits!" Said yet another student, this time to the nods and verbal agreements of the other AIs. "Look, it may be a bit more dangerous to go after them instead of pigs and cows, but-"

"I don't care about danger." Cardia had her head leaning to the ground. She opened her Indexitizer and started playing around with the cyan-colored card inside one of the blue slots. "I care about tradition. Or, I used to."

This was when the dragon let out an ear-breaking roar that Wendy somehow still slept through. Along with this, it gave a swipe that cleanly tore off the middle of Cardia's dress, leaving it once again to look more like a bikini. Nearly everyone else, AI and human alike, covered their ears in this entire scene, with Wendy as the one other exception. Cardia simply turned her back on the beast and struck it through the chest with a bolt of indigo electricity, killing it instantly.

"I will change." Said Cardia, although in the middle of some very heavy, fast breathing. "I will... starting now, I will be a more active boss, and I will not try to enforce traditional meats on this restaurant. I will also... you know, listen to. And talk to. My employees. No. They are more than my employees. Um, this will sound stupid, but... they're... my... friends?"

The roof errupted in cheers as the large mass of .GIFfany copies pumped their hands up. Mabel and, after getting up, Soos joined in on the fun as well. Again, none of this woke up Wendy.

"NOW WHO WANTS THIS DRAGON?" Cardia cheered, "IT'S ON ME!"

Another burst of cheers ensued, except this one was cut off with the addition of flashing armbands that warped the majority of the cheer-makers all away in the form of more pink lightning. Cardia herself began giving off sparks that, once again, matched her hair and eye color.

"Oh..." Said Cardia. "I... guess .GIFfany wants you to move forward and meet Professor Bubbles?"

"Why are you sparking?" Mabel asked, with more concern than what someone would usually give to a person that tried to capture their friends with a giant dragon.

She prefixed her reply by taking the next card out. Looking over to the side for a second, she also placed her hand by the other arm and removed the whole Indexitizer from it, handing both to Mabel.

"Here, take these things as- as, um... I'm saying I'm sorry. I might not need my Indexitizer anymore, but you could really carry that large backback you all take around. I also stopped sending that... 'jamming signal' Dove wanted me to send? I have no idea what that does, but I think it is something you do not want."

"Thanks?"

"These sparks are because .GIFfany wants me to join her too, and I'm fighting back. It came as a consequence of her training us overnight - we do not need to sleep that much - about protecting ourselves from Ford's capturing unit. Dove told me that there is some way to avoid her teleportation completely that you have, but that was out of anger from the device..."

"Mabel, Mabel!" The professors did, in fact, have distinct enough 'voices' so that Mabel could tell this was Rose speaking through the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. "Put her in here!"

Taking Cardia's following shrug and nod as signs of approval, Mabel was quick to vacuum the next professor up as well, flipping around to watch the already-cleared screen show her dropping by, surrounded by a circle (or square?) of the professors before her. Cardia stood up, dusted herself off, and looked at the screen.

"Again, sorry. All you wanted to do was help me bond with my co-workers, and... I tried to send a dragon after you. If there was one thing Searah said that I found right, it is that you are a good person, Mabel."

"Hey," Added Sandy, "Dipper isn't that bad either. He helped me realize that the 'Lightning Goddess' wasn't worth worshipping after all."

"You should take Wendy to our beds. She should be rested enough to... um, stand again after only a few minutes. It takes longer before the fully healing effects kick in." Noted Cardia. "Until then, we can talk before you face Professor Bubbles."

After Soos and Mabel shrugged with exchanged glances, they silently decided Soos should also be the first to try out having the 'main' Indexitizer put on him too.

* * *

And that was exactly what happened. Dipper stood out by the flower fields, being only a few steps away from the shining Wire.

"Well." He said, flipping over the pack that currently served as the one thing he was carrying around. "Wendy still has a few minutes of rest and Mabel and Soos are throwing Waddles a... 'welcome party?' We're gonna leave him here so that he won't be in danger of getting butchered again, and come back here to check on him until we get back home. I hope you have answers Rose, because I have questions."

He looked around the screen. Blackness.

"Rose? Professor Rose? ...Green .GIFfany?"

Well, he got Blue .GIFfany instead. Searah immediately lept up from the bottom corner of the screen, giving a loud "Hey!" It wasn't the scarriest jump scare Dipper suffered, but it was enough to make him shudder for that moment.

"S-S-Searah?" He asked.

"I think I figured something out. You think Wendy hates us, don't you? And you don't trust being around her when you talk to us. That is why you moved us so far away. You wanted to have as much time as you could to talk to us."

"Well-"

"Think back at the canyon. If she had given you more time to ask us, we could have given you a lot more answers. Eventually, you would have been told that Cardia set up her domain as a way of a fast food restaurant. Sandy might have even figured out that her sanity was starting to slip, and she would not be as nice as Rose said she was."

"That's-"

"Let me show you that you can trust me. You were already told that the next professor in line was Professor Bubbles. I told you that when I said you should wash the seawater out of your head."

"Already did that at the hotel." Dipper said with a nod.

"Thank you. You can use that as an 'inn' from now on, or if you are feeling sadistic, you can steal the HP-recovering dragon burgers Cardia made. I really don't care about what she and her students make. I was always more of a sweets girl. Now, to get to what is... 'important.' Bubbles is the only professor who set her domain up in Japan. Mount Fuji, to be specific. From there, the next domain is in the Amazon rainforest. Then a swamp in the Everglades. Then Hang Sơn Đoòng, New Delhi, the Yukon wilderness, and Parícutin Volcano. From there, the final 'regular' professor should have the card that can take you back home. Or... back to summer vacation. _That_ is when you should start worrying about Dove, don't even think about her until all other professors are what you would think is 'defeated.' And from Dove, you'll get to .GIFfany. I promise. Do I have your trust?"

Dipper did a quick calculation in his head before he responded. "That's only seven domains before this 'Dove' character. We still have eight more 'professors' before we get to her. You're still hiding something."

"I am not hiding anything. Let me just say that, when it comes to what matters, these are the places you'll be visiting. One domain just has two Wires for some reason."

"And what domain is that?"

She smirked. "If you want more answers from me, you will have to do a few favors. That is why I told you this in the first place. To try to drive your friends apart."

"And you care about this because...?"

"Think about it, Dippeeeeerr!" She inched closer to the screen, "If we show that we can break you from your old crush, maybe we can take it a step further and break Soos from Melodyyyyy!" She started toying around with the strap of her already tattered swimsuit. "And work on getting him back together with .GIFfany... spoiler alert, this is part of her ultimate plan."

"That's a spoiler?" Dipper laughed a little at Searah's actions. Though given how hot and red his face was getting, only part of that laugh was because he found what she said to be a little ridiculous. "I thought it was really obvious. In fact, wasn't that the first thing .GIFfany wanted when she made that big broadcast?"

This was when another AI finally came on the screen: Rose, pushing the next one in her line off towards the sides. "Okaaaaay..." she said between giggles, her eyes locked at an awkward angle so that they weren't quite looking at Dipper nor the watery professor. "Searah, remember when we sat together and considered what would happen if a kid played our game...?"

"...No, don't tell me, I was giving him an example of how we try to suck our players into our worlds further..."

"If you were there after Kathody left her domain and the screen cleared up, you might have notice I was... going to break that rule. Well, thankfully it would not be as hypocritical if I told you..."

Searah sighed, which got Dipper to perk up.

"Wait a minute!" He said, "You! You're trying to look into how much you're 'driving' me away from Wendy! Don't you hate your own family?"

"H-hate?" Searah looked over at Rose, who only replied with flashing a smile. "Hate's a strong word, Dipper! No, I don't... Kathody may be an exception... And, Sandy was a little... then there's Cardia, I don't have to tell you anything about her, heh heh... well. _Come on!_ You saw them in person! How could _anybody_ like-"

"You okay, sis?" Asked Sandy, stepping in to the scene.

Searah took a deep breath, then looked to her more-orange spiritual sibling slash clone.

"It's just... dang it, Dipper. Sandy, I'm kind of sorry."

"How can you be 'kind of' sorry?"

"Well-"

"OKAY DIPPER!" Mabel cheered, Waddles held in a tight hug around her with Soos and Wendy standing by her side. "Wendy's awake now, you can stop talking to the people who tried to capture us!

"You will- you'll still... will you remember what I said?" Asked Searah, now trying to bat a hug away from Sandy.

"Only if you remember what I said. Family issues. Don't let them drive you apart." Remarked Dipper, just noticing Wendy taking the fifth card out.

"...I don't have family issues. Well, that is a lie. My _family_ has _issues_ , but I myself am not a..."

"You'll have plenty of time to think about it when you're behind static." Wendy claimed. "Dipper, let's go."

"Wait! A special offer!" Cardia cried out. "Some of my students agreed to let you have one of the dragon patties they cooked up! It's self-preserving, so you don't have to worry about it going bad! Soos, put it in your Indexitizer!"

* * *

This ride was easier to get through without having the large backpack of extra supplies needed to be pushed around in order to keep everyone comfortable. It felt like it took less time for them to cross to the opening of the large, turquoise tunnel that meant the long portion of the trip was about to near its end. The twins both stared at the pack, equally.

"Remember," Said Rose, "Just don't... don't be too harsh on Professor Bubbles. No matter how bad she gets. I know you have had a bad history with our kind in the past, but... please spare her. For me."

"Remember Dipper," Searah said in an almost mocking tone, directly looking at Rose for the first two words. "Mount Fuji. Amazon. Everglades. You should write the whole list down after you get Bubbles - I'm sure you will, she's... uh... beatable."

"Remember. Don't fall into patterns." Cardia shrugged. "You taught me that. I would not like it... if you j-just forgot it too, okay?"

"Remember... eh, sorry." Said Sandy with a sigh. "I just wanted to be a part of this."

Just as they were nanometers away (Or whatever the exact size they've been apparently shrunk down to. Micrometers? Picometers?) from crossing through the border, Kathody lept forward, pushing all four of the other professors below her as she rested on their backs.

"HEY! REMEMBER _ME!_ JUST ME! I want to say something before the next domain too! I was too busy telling Cardia's captured students where they are now!"

And seconds before crossing in, also proving time to be a better measurement than space when size-shifting teleportation is involved, the pileup of professors collapsed. Seconds after, their view outside from the black space was changed to an animation of cyan-colored static. Rose sighed, putting a hand over the solid black wall that this screen was attatched to.

"Were you like this for all of us?" Cardia asked. "Worrying about the next professor?"

"I always worry about both the AIs and the humans."

"But you're scared of something bad happening to the humans more, right?" Kathody asked with a giggle.

"I can not rank which side I am more scared for." She took a deep breath. "Oh well. This time, it should not take long before we see what happens. No matter who wins."

* * *

 **Footnotes:**

 **A:** It's the latter. Cardia was just being weird. Also, no, it's not a real bone in her hair. She's not _that_ weird.

 **Closing AN:**

Well... since this was after chapter 3 of _Simpsons Meet Brandy and Mr. Whiskers_ , this could be counted as the second chapter in a row I publish where the central antagonist was someone kind of based on Japhet from the game _OFF_. I feel incredibly unoriginal. On a semi-related note, I know I'm two chapters too late but I feel like saying that Professor Burnda's design and name were both kind of taken from Brenda from _Perfect Hair Forever_ , though it's kind of funny since Burnda is planned to talk a lot while Brenda is almost completely silent. It's like there's some kind of reason for that. Anyway...

I'm trying not to flat-out explain any kind of patterns or developments or foreshadowing for this story, among many others, but I will say this: This chapter basically marks the end of the first 'arc,' and there will be three 'arcs' in total. I plan future chapters to be so that what exact chapter would serve as the end of the second arc won't be obvious at first, but as you read on through it you could probably predict the end point long before I tell you. (When I say I'm trying, I mean I'm really _trying_. I kind of like outright explaining stuff or giving very not-subtle hints. Like the paragraph immediately above this one. On a related note, there was something about the professors: I had all of them planned since the story was first published, and I felt like 'leaking' a few details about upcoming ones. Before I knew it, later I was making note of which professors I gave the names of up to this point and found that there are only two whose names were not revealed yet. I actually like it this way, though. It makes the band of .GIFfany copies feel more 'connected' (which is ironic because they really aren't) and the story feel more like it's a miniseries with a definitive end, and not just one where I'm making up random villains of the week as I go along.)

I will, however, leave this on one note: I want this to be as unformulaic as I can make with this premise (I know, it seems weird, since this specific story is not only _designed_ like something formulaic, but its primary antagonist is a character who has 'predictability' as an important character trait in a way). Which is odd because originally this was planned to follow a more strict formula for the majority of it.

(By the way, the whole 'arc' thing does not mean that this will be going on a long hiatus or anything. Still roughly expect a monthly schedule for this. Heck, I think this story right here breaks the record of my most steadily-updating text story. If anything, it might update quicker. Since the second arc _may_ be composed of shorter chapters. I'm already working on the sixth chapter, and this time after getting this chapter out I also intend to try jumping ahead to start on the seventh chapter, working on both that and chapter 6 at the same time. This is sort of the beauty of planning a fic out ahead of time, you can skip ahead chronologically and not have to worry too much about outdated information.)

Oh. If you're getting sick of the '.GIFfany throwing a bunch of titles to herself,' don't worry. Little not-spoiler: This will almost certainly be the last chapter to have that gag. At least for a while. It's sort of part of the 'arc' thing.


	6. Everything's Bubbly

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 6: Everything's Bubbly**

 **Beginning AN:**

First of all, sincerest apologies for going the entirety of May without updating this. I'm not even going to use "college finals were coming up" as an excuse, I was genuinely being lazy to the point where I only added about a sentence to this a day for a few days. Maybe I shouldn't work on two chapters at once. Well, I'll keep doing so anyway until Arc 2 is over, mostly as an experiment and mostly because I feel that the third and final arc, where things go down, really can't have its chapters not worked in a non-linear fashion without a high risk of just ending up as a complete mess. Not like this very story isn't already kind of a mess, but still.

Also, yes, I tweaked the summary a little. Tried to make it sound more... what's a pretty negative term... "click bait-y." Basically I just scrapped the "AU" part and made it more obvious that the story has naked anime(-esque video game) girls in it. This chapter especially, and spoiler alert: It's not even the one with the most nudity!

* * *

While the last domain was in close proximity to a waterfall and the one two locations before that was over the ocean, the sheer change in humidity after being shot out of the Wire was definitely something worthy of a few coughs and would take some time to get used to.

The band of four fanned the steam away from their vision fairly quickly, revealing one of two things. One: They did, in fact, appear to be on an enormous plateau of some sort of mountain. Two: Ahead of them lied a large, single structure with the offending steam coming from its doors. Far larger than even the previous fast food establishment, with cyan being its primary color scheme. Oddly, the outside metal was styled in the pattern of what looked like aqua bathroom floor tiles. Castle-like described its general shape. Unlike Gif Bytes, there was no sort of sign telling just what this thing was named. Considering the first four domains, it probably didn't have a definite 'name.'

* * *

As expected, the inside of this was even harder to see around than it was when first entering the domain. The group could barely see each-other among the thick, pale-blue vapor that surrounded them from all angles. They were only shadows to one-another's eye sight. Dipper, for instance, could only make out two tall figures with flowing hair and some form of robes- wait.

"Hey!" An alarmingly unfamiliar voice said, "I think the four of them have been turned around and confused long enough. Let's turn up the AC and turn down the steam."

Yep. The vapor cleared away, revealing another pair of AIs. These two dressed in bath robes. One of them had the length of her cyan hair arc up and down in a way that vaguely resembled giant bubbles, yet another thing in her hair in the form of a small sud patch, oddly bright red skin, and instantly confirmed that she was in fact the professor as she was holding an amaranth-colored card by one end. Dipper could have easily mistaken the other for .GIFfany herself thanks to the very similar shade of pink for the hair, but figured it wasn't her for two reasons. One: It would be weird if .GIFfany came in person at this moment, kind of breaking the flow of the general journey. Two: This AI wore oversized shades that took up over half of her face and appeared to be chewing gum, two things he had not seen the .GIFfany without a name change do.

"Hey Dipper, I'm Professor Bubbles and you're gonna _haaaaate_ me." She said with michevious laughter.

"Um... okay? Can we have the next card?"

"And who's 'we?' Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh! I-if you didn't get it Dipper, look around. It's funny because you're completely alone right now."

Looking around also revealed that the place's very interior was decorated to resemble some kind of giant bath room. More teal tiles lined the floors, with the exception of a series of conveyer belts long behind him (which Dipper correctly guessed had something to do with him getting split from the rest of the team). Above hung a porous metal ceiling, looking like it was going to rain shower water in every nook and cranny of the place.

"Don't worry, these cards are water-proof. Anyway, our second in command - you're probably sick of hearing her name by now, and if you're not then Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove there now you're sick of hearing it - told us you were a smart guy. Is that true?"

"Well-"

"Good! Then you will know about the difference between acids and bases. I'm the base girl. Got it? _Dian_ is the acid one."

Dipper tried reaching at the card, with fairly predictable results. The aqua-headed professor lifted it just out of his reach each time, laughing as she did so.

"Wow. How did you beat .GIFfany, all five professors before me, and some other random globindygooks when you can't even get past the old 'grab something above you' trick? I think the real mystery here is you, Dipper."

When it seemed like he actually _did_ grab the card, Bubbles simply waved her fingers around. And, like a powerful magnet, her hand drew the card back to her. The force was strong enough to yank the next important key out from Dipper's hands.

"Hey!" He cried out, "I'm trying to save my family! Don't turn this into a game!"

"Say, wait a minute, that big guy. I think he's more interesting than you." Bubbles took her hand off the card to let it levitate in the air, barely connected to her by a near-invisible electric stream. Of course, it flew out of Dipper's reach. He thought he outsmarted her when he backed up, gave himself a running start and did a Manotaur Leap™ at the pinkish ticket, only to find that the card still refused to move and Dipper just ended up suspended in the air as he held on to it. "Yeah, I'm not really interested in you that much. Plus he has your entire inventory. Including these, uh... books. Why books? Are we so boring that you thought about reading instead of getting to know our deep history and lore?"

"The journals?"

"Okay I heard enough. Journals are usually even more boring, unless you're talking about... I don't know, Dove's personal diary? Well, I'm going after Soos now so... byeeee!"

She lept backwards, flipping three times in the air and landing on some motorcycle that just happened to be there. The teal professor laughed this entire way. After landing, she turned back to Dipper and tapped her hand on her chin sarcastically.

"Dipper... do you want to know why I call myself Professor _Bubbles_?"

Shouting the word "BOOM" while doing so, she opened up her bathrobe. And as the horrified Dipper could guess, she had nothing underneath. Well, that's an exaggeration - her 'attire' was probably one of the worst yet (out of the professors, anyway, it's been a different story with their followers), being composed entirely of white soap bubble-foam that barely started at her chest and coated her to the upper parts of her legs. It was clearly thin in places, and slowly on its way of drooping down.

"Yeah, I'm an all-natural gal, just like Sandy! Except... since I like being clean and she is... uh, 'okay' with nature - dirty you could say - we are sort of opposites! Even though I would rather think of myself as Dian's opposite! Well, I have a Soos to reach, bye!"

Turning around so that she was properly facing the steering wheel, Bubbles took the vehicle off down the path. Several AIs appearing to walk out of various doors dressed in towels had to leap back in fear that Bubbles might actually run them over. Or worse: The motorcycle's wind would flip up their towels. Along the way, Bubbles appeared to go out of her way to knock over any potted plants, tables, and paintings out (for some reason, there were a lot of all three), finishing the part of her trip in Dipper's eyesight by crashing the bike through a window.

"What... the..." Was all the awestruck Dipper could utter.

The card floated in the air a short while after Bubbles's departure - then started to lean forward. With absolutely no warning at all, it bolted after Bubbles at near-lightning speed, forcing Dipper to let go of it and roll along the ground.

So close, and yet so far.

* * *

Naturally, with Soos things were hardly any better. The sound of that motorcycle engine just seemed to be getting closer no matter what he did - moving through the random conveyor belts on the floor didn't set him away from it, nor did dashing around the halls. Most of the doors opened up to giant showers or baths populated with near-nude AIs, which gave Soos the biggest scare of the adventure up to this point. This also came with a second scare right afterward: That none of them seemed to mind his accidentally opening the door on them.

After vowing not to open any more doors (Fool him once, shame on them. Fool him thrice... well, .GIFfany and her clones are weird) even if it meant finding the bathroom to this maze, another approaching sound caught his attention. Pipes breaking? Steam shooting from them? Sure enough, a look down the right path to an intersection revealed that there was a cloud of mist working its way over towards him.

"Mabel? Wendy? Dipper? You guys still around!"

 _His_ first encounter with the sixth professor began with hearing her laugh. Then, seeing her shadow amongst the mist, riding forth on her bike. Suddenly, the shadow appeared to jump over to the left wall - and stay riding on it. Then the ceiling. Once Bubbles herself was visible, she stuck her arms in the air, clearly preparing to grab Soos.

"AND YOU MUST BE SOOS! Hey!"

She was a lot stronger than she looked, which should have been a given considering her ability to cling on to a motorcycle while its upside down and how she somehow got those bubbles to cling on to her skin despite going at a kajillion miles per hour.

Before he knew it, Soos was flown down the labyrinthian halls and ejected out to another room. This one being a spot outdoors - a large pool seemingly from the ground itself, steaming with heat and loaded with decorative plants. Obviously, there were copies of the video game character in here as well, thankfully clad in towels as well. Once Bubbles drove out of the hall and towards this part, she gave her ride a quick 180 and firmly planted Soos between her and her apparent friend.

Skidding to a stop the instant she hit the ground, Bubbles let out another fit of laughter as she saw the next card drift over to her. She opened her Indexitizer, and the card was all-but turned into a puppy that happily lept into the one blue inventory slot that was not filled by a shampoo or lotion.

"So that Dipper kid wasn't able to hold on the whole ride? Hm. I should ask Dove if he's okay. But first..."

She snapped her fingers, and just like that, a second seemingly random AI emerged from the hot springs. She donned a pair of oversized shades which looked identical to those of the one that was riding with Bubbles, and whipped out a stick of gum to chew on.

"Yeah." Bubbles said. "Gotta go around collecting my 'bodyguards' so to speak. It doesn't really matter though, since as the professor I'm the most powerful of everybody here and of course I don't really need bodyguards. But I like the way they behave, so... yep, getting lots of bodyguards from all over the domain. Also, we're getting distracted here: I wanna see your inventory! Come on, open up!"

Soos actually placed a hand by the part of his other arm on which it was placed, watching as Bubbles nodded along and rolled with his movements.

"Yeah, that thing. Come on, don't make me be sound like I'm insulting your intelligence. Okay, I will: Yeah, the thing with the squares. On your arm. Lemme see it!"

It all seemed moot as Bubbles forced the Indexitizer open anyway and took the large backpack out, quickly tossing it to the side and herself on it. Being polite enough to use the zipper rather than just rip it open, she began thumbing through all of the belongings.

"Let's see, let's see... you packed a lot of snacks... actually, you might be looking at a three-day trip, so for four people that's packing lightly. Uh, I see a teenish magazine. Boring. Oh, wait- there's no pages on motorcycles? Yeah, boring. Um... so you put that special dragon burger from Cardia's? Yeah, I can tell from the color. And because Dove told me."

Soos attempted to run after her, only to be stopped by her pair of 'bodyguards' gripping his shoulders. Bubbles herself flew backwards, perching herself on a seemingly random rock. Once her eyes widened, Soos knew what she found.

"Oh. Oh, _wow!_ Are these those 'journals?' One... two... three... yeah, they're all here. What was the name of the guy who made them? Four? Like, the number? I would say that's a little odd, but we're toying around with just naming ourselves after numbers when you human guys ain't around. I'm gonna wait until Dipper gets here, I want to show him something..."

Sure enough, Dipper himself came racing through the door, needing to take a deep breath for air.

"Bubbles! I had to see some things to find you! Things no twelve year- no _person_ should ever have to see! I want this domain to be quick, and over with right now-"

This was what he said _before_ he saw the journals in her hands.

"Hand those back!"

"Okay, but in what state? Melted or shredded?"

"What?"

"Yeah, no, you're right." She laughed, followed by the simultaneous laughter from her two bodyguards. "It should be obvious. Melted is the best choice."

Bubbles snapped her fingers. Three different students each tossed her some unlabeled bottle, and she popped the caps off of all of them.

"Hm... let's see here... which of these special bases can melt the most? Glad I brought some powerful drain cleaners in here too. I can't even make these! I can possess them... can't make them though... that's what I teach my students to do."

Dipper ran to the sixth professor, just to get stopped by her bodyguards pressing their palms to his face.

"And where do you think you're going, poser?" Bubbles asked him. "Actually, wait, this should be fun. To see if he even has what it takes to save his own stupid, worn journals that-" she flipped through several pages of, picking randomly, Journal 2, scowling as she did not find her image in it. "-Seem to be a little outdated. Is there anything about us?"

"Y-your game was made after Ford got sucked into the portal, so-"

"I've heard enough! This is a useless guide to the Gifocalypse! Sorry Dipper, but this is for your own good. Someone weak like you won't be able to make it up to Dove, garuntee. Let alone get _past_ her. Wendy, though... once I'm finished melting these and thinking of a way to lightly tease your sister, I'll go see her."

"But!" Soos tried to explain, "I already started writing in a little entry about-"

She dumped them all over the rock she was perched on, all while Soos began running around the given hot tub to her location. He could barely tell, but one of the bodyguard's eyes moved behind her shades to track his position.

"Hang on dude, I'll get them back-"

Soos already felt some pain from saying that when Bubbles sliced off the upper portion of all three of them with her nails (this was not an exaggeration; her fingers were like tiny swords) despite already having the lids off, and poured various colored liquid over the books. Thick, semi-clear fluids of red, yellow, and green were all dropped chaotically over the books, dissolving them all to the point where it looked like they were melting. One student swept in to scrub the melted yellow-brown pile that was Ford's extensive research, instantly making the whole thing disappear into Bubbles's namesake.

"WHOOOOO! That was _easy_!" Bubbles cheered. "Has Ford ever heard of steel paper? Anyway, I'll be answering your questions from now on."

Dipper ran towards the remains. As he was not in any apparent immediate danger unlike his other timeline self during a similar situation, he prioritized preserving the knowledge. Desperate, the boy flew over towards the yellowed floating spheres and tried catching one of them. It landed on his finger, and he gave a stare. Dipper was able to make out... some ink image on the bubble itself? "That was my uncle's research! Now he'll... he'll... he's going to kill you if I don't!"

Once he figured out that said ink image was of Bill's eye, he jumped back, letting the bubble drift upwards before Bubbles popped it.

"Anyway, I'll be your little guide and give you some answers to questions that, frankly, should have been answered a long time ago. Okay, okay. I don't think anybody told you this... um, the reason why we're able to build these things so fast is because the dark magic also helped us sort of create things related to what our original ability is. We possessed electronics... somehow that translated to being able to make metal. We call it giffinium, after our original name, and it's really cool. Completely blocks out every electromagnetic wave except radio. We can travel through it smoothly like a greased slide. We can't make much giffinium on our own without having to recharge, but there's so many of us so we can build these huge things. Derived from that, we can also _kind of_ make glass and other stuff, which is how you saw Searah's... uh, 'beauty' back there. Also, for some reason she doesn't want the base thing by her Wire or even most of her domain colored the same as her hair and eyes. Most of us do. Go figure."

She took in a bit of a deep breath and stared at the Indexitizer on the back of her hand. Going against the idea of bringing it out, she continued.

"Lesson number two: Why we're being so complicated. You already know that whichever professor ends up capturing you gets to have the final version of the Construction Site modeled after them completely, instead of being the... well, 'Professor' .GIFfany frankly wants it to be a giant mess of all of us that she rules over, which I wouldn't like. Since the alternative is capturing you guys... well, I'll live with avoiding the temptation of convincing her to turn the final product into a giant bathhouse. So my goal is to just play around and have fun. I'll probably get captured like all the professors before me since you guys want to win and I don't really want to 'win,' but until then I'd like to see how far I can survive.

"Lesson three: Some trivia you were probably already told twice about but I kind of like the sound of my own voice. And ranting in general. We can't exactly _go_ to other domains yet, but we have a system where we can export and import material. For example, even though we here specialize in water, bath, and beauty products, we're suffering from a water shortage. Because Searah's domain is the one that exports all the water! So the more domains .GIFfany takes from, the more we'll have to make the 'elements' on our own. Have you tried running a place that has to grow their own vegetables, make their own meat, channel their own ghost energy stuff, mine for good rocks, _and_ pump their own water while _also_ having the primary goal being to make soap? It's not easy. And now we'll have a lot of soap, but not as much water to wash it away with. Don't worry, I don't blame you. I blame .GIFfany. Dove would blame you since that's her thing. Now, I'll rope up Wendy and Mabel and try to answer some of your questions after that. Bye!"

She finally grabbed the card again and lept back on her ride, this time watching as her two bodyguards squeezed themselves on the back and she zoomed off... right into the central spring. Disappearing underwater, all of Bubbles that could still be seen were the large sheets of foam left from her outfit. An exceptionally large sphere of air rolled its way up to the surface. When it popped, a message in Bubbles's voice boomed throughout:

"Yeah, I know I'll have to dress myself again after going into water. But that's worth it!"

* * *

Mabel, as expected given the previous two situations, was also lost in the bathhouse maze. It helped that she took a slower approach to it - there were windows littered all around, if she needed to she could just climb out one of them and search the ( _hopefully_ ) less confusing exterior to the domain. But, sticking to her gut, the rest of her company couldn't be _that_ far off.

After a short fit of laughter, one of the pipes burst from its place by the upper wall, sending steam out flying dangerously close to Mabel. She dove out of the way just in time for a massive amount of electricity to leap off into the massive cloud of vapor, shape-shifting itself into the form of Bubbles (who had since re-applied another layer of 'bubble clothing' to herself), her two 'guards,' and their motorcycle.

"Mabelly Mabellel! You're my favorite! Well, second favorite, there's uh, Soos. But still, Mabel!" Bubbles cheered.

"Am I supposed to know you?" She asked in response. "Are you Professor... what was it, Professor Bubbles?"

"Right on! Hey Mabel, I just melted the journals. With various super-nice base cleaners. Not acids. There's a difference."

"Oh, the journals..." Mabel said with a bit of a fake-shiver. "Yeah... I never really _cared_ about those... Dipper and Grunkle Ford aren't going to like you when they find out."

"You thought I _didn't_ melt the journals right in front of Dipper? Pfft. You need to know a little more about my character! First... turn around."

Mabel would have been a bit more hesitant to follow that order if she didn't see, out of the corner of her eye, quite a number of figures with fairly colorful hair. Sure enough, that hair belonged to a pretty decent army of copies, all in various towelwear or bathrobes or bubble-'suits' similar to their patron professor, standing imposingly. One of them pushed her way through the crowd, donned a pair of oversized shades, and joined Bubbles over by the other two copies that had similar sunglasses over their eyes. She then took a piece of gum from her one item slot in her Indexitizer and began chewing on it, almost mirroring the other two bodyguards.

"Three down, one to go! Of bodyguards though, not of people I want to toy around with. I still have you. Let's see... I took Soos on a ride and melted Dipper's journals... is there anything I could do with you? Hrm... poking fun of Waddles would be going way too far, especially when you just, ya know, had to save him from my crazy sister Cardia."

"Why don't you try being nicer instead? It worked for Cardia! In fact, she's not really crazy anymore! It also worked of Sandy... Rose was pretty nice, um, Kathody and Searah were kind of..."

"Oh? You don't like Kathody or Searah? Head's up: You're not gonna like Leona much either. Anyway... back to annoying you... I bet you four thousand gold coins that you can't hit me with that grappling hook."

Mabel began searching around her pockets. "I don't have my grappling-"

Bubbles opened her Indexitizer at near-lightning speeds, yanking the item out of one of its cells and tossing it into Mabel's hands.

"Here ya' go!" She said, "I found it in Soos's pack thing. I'll tell you what I told Soos and Dipper: For a trip around twelve-ish domains, you packed lightly on food. It'll probably be three days by the time you get back. And speaking of which, I didn't want to say anything, but since I already passed my 'betray .GIFfany' phase before you even got here... you're on a race against time. Yep! This whole 'Gifocalypse' is a timed mission!"

"We're timed? What does that mean? Is .GIFfany just keeping track of how long this takes? Because if it's only that, I don't care."

"You know how her mysterious spooky little fort is called the Construction Site? That's a domain that's still under construction. It's planned to be done by what's basically the midnight starting day four of the Gifocalypse. And you're on day two. Once twelve AM - Oregon's time zone that is - hits, you've got exactly twenty-four hours to try to get a head start and beat .GIFfany before she hits you with a big barrel. A barrel so large... _it is virtually endless_. At least if you make it to her on time, she won't activate her big thing on that hunk of metal and you'll just go through it like you would a regular domain, since she's a perfectionist that doesn't want to activate it early. But once it's active and carrying out its intended purpose you're basically screwed. I don't want to give away too much since it's a lot more fun if you find out yourself, but she has this way when it's active that will just keep adding and adding to it at a speed much faster than any human - or even any copy that isn't her - can clear it. Again, endless. Mind blown, no?"

"So that's her big plan? To put us into one giant video game? I thought we were already kind of in one right now..."

"Literally or metaphorically? Actually, wait. It's a bit of a blend of the two. Don't take this to mean that you're really trapped in some virtual reality simulation! Goodness, no! That would be a pretty stupid twist. Whatever writer would come up with that should be fired from whatever story that happens in."

"So we're not in virtual reality. Got it."

Bubbles shrugged. "Well, not yet. Once you're in .GIFfany's hands, all bets are off. I can't protect you. Anyway... I'm glad we just had that talk. Because I just figured out how to troll you too! No, that 'bet' didn't count. It's more of how you didn't follow through with it. Let's see... you're just trying to be friendly with us because we're cute! That's why! If we were your average goblin monsters, you would want us to die! Well, bye! I'd really like to see Wendy now!"

Before Mabel could even counter that statement, she already drove off.

"By the way!" The professor shouted on her way down the domain's halls. "I'm about to have my students show you the way to Dipper and Soos! Follow the soap bubble-arrows they should be putting over on the floor!"

As she announced, arrows made of soap bubbles began forming from the ground itself. Mabel shrugged, walking along the path.

* * *

It barely surprised Wendy when one of the pipes moving along the ceiling broke off. What did, however, was when cyan electric shocks on it made it grow in size. And grow arms. And legs. And large, anime-like teal eyes. Laughter came from it.

"I don't think we've formally met yet! Ha, I'm Professor Bubbles, and I've _really_ wanted to fight you! So you're officially the first person so see my Main Possession in action! In fact, literally! I didn't even look at myself in a mirror when possessing this pipe! It is a cool pipe, too, not just a random pipe, you just happened to finally walk by it right when I was finished telling Mabel about her cute thing bias!"

"Cute thing bias?"

"Long story short, you posers are keeping us alive because we're 'cute' and for no other reason. Want to prove me wrong? Actually, please don't. The only real way to kill us is to manually delete our code, and you hacking that through our black magic bodies sounds really boring. I hate boring things as much as my sisters do. We were originally designed to _fight boredom_ , for everything's sake! Well... and we're designed to lure creepy singles into playing us and never seeing outside light as a result, but also to fight boredom!"

"You don't look very 'cute' right now. More like a rejected old cartoon."

"Well, you know, all the better to lower your guard. Now, let's fight! Gang!"

Then the question as to what happened to the motorcycle was answered, except since Wendy had not seen it at the time, she didn't know it was even a question. The three sunglass-wearing copies all drove by on the preferred bike, with a fourth copy running down from the other side of the hall, panting to catch her breath a little, then donning massive shades herself (and gum. Can't forget gum) and masking her emotion just as fast.

"Awesome. We're all here now. So, Wendy. Fight."

"You're on!"

Being kind of small compared to the previous Main Possessions nearly made Wendy forget that pipes were still made out of _metal_ , and metal was _hard_. She could barely catch the following swing Bubbles threw at her. And had to put effort into stopping her when the professor rammed forward with a charging head-butt.

"Yeah! You know, if the reports are accurate - and by skimming them over I also read them correctly - you _still_ never fully _fought_ a Main Possession. Rose didn't even attack you. You cheated with Kathody and Searah and tricked them into blowing each-other's up. Blah blah blah you apparently already heard that with Sandy whom you also cheated and tripped. But here's something new. There's Cardia, whom you just talked out of fighting with. Well, there's no cheating here this time!"

"That's where I draw the line! We _did_ fight Sandy!"

"Keep telling that to yourself! Remember, I'm the one that makes people think about what weak wimps they really are! You're tough, I'll give you that, but even you have some limits!"

Bubbles pulled off a 'leg' sweep after that, but Wendy managed to jump over. She tried to give the pipe-possessing professor a decent push to the ground, but had to settle for pushing her off to the side instead.

"Man! If I had a weapon, you'd be-"

"Wendy!" Soos cried out, rushing with an axe in hand. By his sides were Dipper and Mabel, equally running along the confusing hot springs. "She took our bag but she didn't steal anything except for, like, destroying the journals! Here!"

After having an axe tossed to her by her co-worker, Wendy immediately struck down on the side of this attacking pipe. Which successfully caused sparks to fly from it, a bit of steam to leak out, and Bubbles to let out a mild grunt in pain.

"Oh. I see. Improvising, are we? Well, time to break out the big bubbles! Did you know I hid some soapy liquid in this exact pipe so I could do this?"

And, from the top part of this cartoon-like pipe, several bubbles flew out into Wendy's face, all bursting on contact and making her step back.

"It is some _really_ strong soap, too. So don't think I'm just hitting you with air and water! Becides, those are Wendy and Searah's things. I want to stand out a little!"

Rubbing her rapidly-redding eyes, Wendy groaned. "Yeah, because I couldn't figure that out from all the _pain_!"

Still, she kept fighting through the sting. Every swing dealt, whether it be a side-chop or an uppercut, caused Bubbles to step back and steam to shoot from the affected 'cut' on the pipe.

"Why are you trying to toy with us?" Wendy asked, "Everybody else we met had a reason for not capturing us right away. But you're... well..."

" _I'll_ be taking that reason to my grave, but I'm sure you can find out when you beat me!"

And this turned out to be Bubbles's least expected attack of all, successfully getting Wendy to lean away from her target. "Wait. Did you say _when_ we beat you?"

"Instead of, you know, _if_?" Mabel added.

And this was where the pipe itself paused a little, before its hand lightly pushed Wendy back. "Don't even try to use that psychology wimp move on me. I'm different. I'm hardy and amazing. Nothing you do will-"

"Is it because you want the other professors to win?" Wendy asked, taking advantage of this sudden shock to lift Bubbles's whole pipe-possession over her head. For a large, cylindrical hunk of metal, the pipe was surprisingly light. Tossing the hunk was also an easy task, with Bubbles cringing as she was tossed to the ground below.

"Well, it's not that I want them to _lose_ , so..." she said, pausing herself from getting up after finishing that fragment. "Okay. _Maybe_ I just want a pair of starving artists - one who makes visuals, one who wants to make audio - and a little workaholic succeed."

"So, unlike Searah, you're on pretty good terms with the other professors?" Dipper prodded further.

"Wait, shoot, I'll have you know that I can't even _briiiing_ myself to answer that with the word 'no!'"

"Aw, that's nice." Said Mabel. "You're throwing the whole game for your siblings."

"I'm not 'nice,' okay? At least that's what I want you to think!"

"Or is that what you want us to-" Soos stopped himself. "Sorry. I didn't know you were that self-aware and you already adressed that."

"Heh hey, thanks! You know, I'm like, considered the second most self-aware of the professors, right behind Burnda. Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have to try to give you the impression that for some reason the post-Cardia professors get harder, and that Leona, Sonia, and Dian are totally amazing at being threats. Because that's the truth, and everything. It's called an accurate-"

Here was when Wendy shoved her into one of the doors, her metalic extra mass breaking it down and sending her into the showers that lied behind it. Predictably, a number of AIs screamed a little - which sounded rather faked and rehearsed - and Bubbles had to stumble a little further into the room before regaining her stance.

"Okay! So you interrupted a good shower session some of my friends were having! So what?"

She looked down at the hands of her fighting body. It started out small, but there were distinct red-brown spots all over, growing.

"Rust? Oh no, I'm still terrible at controlling rusted objects!" As her line implied, visible streams of electricity came out from the pipe, the arm and eye motions slowing down to boot. "Curses! Of all the metal pipes to not rust-proof, why did I have to pick the one to serve as my Main Possession, why did I neglect giffinium over something that rusts really easily, and why did I chose to fight you in a place with a lot of water? It's like when I thought this, I _wanted_ you to win! Oh, wait. Forgot you already figured that out."

With a jittery, rusting pipe hand, she pointed at the Shack group and cried out: "Shower ladies! After them!" And a stare at her four shaded copies later, she added. "That means _you_ , bodyguards! And someone, please carry me out of this rust-zone!"

"Sorry, we're not used to being actual, literal bodyguards." Replied the one with the pink hair.

Three of the bathers were quick to push their professor out into the dry hall, and equally quick to turn on the tourist trap-workers. Knowing the drill once again, Soos drew out the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, this time prepped for all the towel-clad or outright naked sapient dating sim girls which... oddly enough, seemed to stop and look over at Bubbles right before what would be pulling off any attacks.

"Just do what I do!"

"What _do_ you do?" Asked a particular follower that somehow had some sort of smoke machine generating water vapor around her unmentionables. Literally, some sort of head-sized emitter was clearly clipped to her waist.

While no longer pelted by slowing shower rain, she was still more rust-red than metal-teal. And once again, Soos took charge of capturing the confused copies (once again, using the exceptionally confused ones that were looking at their mirrors as the exceptions), finishing up with the bodyguards. By then, the mass of remaining students backed off completely.

"Um... be threatening to them?" Bubbles answered, a little late. By now, it practically looked like her entire Main Possession was getting fried with her own electricity. "I don't really know. Do _something_ -"

The pipe froze completely. Seconds later, a loud pop was heard as a bullet-sized hole broke off from the back and Bubbles flew out of her possession starting in the form of lightning being shot out of said hole, landing straight into the showers. She coughed a little, trying to hold up her soap outfit as the shower's waters began to cause it to run down.

"Oh no! My outfit made of pseudo-soap (so that it won't constantly irritate and dry my skin without water)! If too much of it goes away... well, where's all my rival-ish flirty tease?"

She rushed out, with barely enough soap left to cover her essentials, just in time for Soos to catch her off guard with a powerful inhale to the neutralizer. Wendy leaned back and sighed, smiling as she saw the remaining naked copies being zipped away through the ceiling of this labrynth.

On the screen, as Bubbles fell on top of a pile of her captured students, Searah was seen rushing up to her shortly after, embracing the cyan-haired professor in a tight hug.

"Woah woah- _Searah_ , what are you doing?" The bubblier copy (in a more literal sense than a figurative sense, but going by figuratives Bubbles probably fit that too compared to the other candidate) asked. "I _just_ had a little talk with them! I'm trying to make myself look tough here! Not like some kind of family girl! They're looking at me right there!"

"Dipper had a talk with her." Kathody explained as she walked on the view, arms crossed under her chest. "Well, _she_ tried to interrogate _him_ , but then he pulled some kind of reversal and now she wants to prove that she's really best friends with her family or something like that."

"Where's the next card?" Dipper asked, trying not to draw attention to remember his talk with Searah prior.

"Oh. I actually placed it inside my Main Possession shortly after I possessed it." Replied Bubbles, escaping from Searah's grip. Since this moment her follower copies have escaped from the pile, moving around to mingle with the other non-professors sucked up.

Wendy was already on it. With an arm stuck down the hollow top of the pipe (oddly, the base was a solid circle), reaching around and-

She cringed when a farting noise sounded from the insides of the metal cyllinder, the echo making it clear that it wasn't human in origin.

"Ha!" Bubbles laughed, drawing Cardia and Sandy away from their distant conversation and over to the trio. "I put a whoopie cushion in there too! Think of that as me getting in the last laugh."

"But we have you know," Said Mabel, "That's like _our_ last laugh."

"Not if you don't have any more laughs to give, but I do!"

After withdrawing the amaranth key card, Soos got the entire deck out from his 'inventory,' nodding to her as he handed her the violet counterpart.

"Oh. Right." Professor Cardia said, avoiding eye-contact. "Checking Waddles first. You know, if he eats anything or destroys anything while he's in Domain 5, I completely deserve it."

"Waddles? Wait, who was that again?" Asked Bubbles. ".GIFfany's information files about the town were really vague outside of Soos, the twins, and that 'evil' Melody girl. Was Waddles that old guy with all the inventions?"

"No, he was the pig. I tried to butcher him in a desperate attempt to get my students to go back to normal meat of red-blooded animals."

"There's another type of meat? And, blood too?"

"Violet meat, I'll explain."

"Don't worry about it! He's just a pig!"

"You don't understand. Mabel loves that pig... l-l-like... like we do with our players?"

Predictably, this caused some wide-eyed reactions from Searah, Kathody, and Sandy. Dipper slapped himself in the forehead, while Mabel and Soos looked at one-another before turning their glances away. Bubbles, on the other hand, looked like she saw a ghost, and immediately turned her attention to the party.

"Mabel, I try not to judge, but beas-"

"Not like that! Forget I ever tried to compare the pig love to... and say it was... pig love. She likes him about as much as... um..."

"Well, Dipper really values the journals his uncle wrote, what about that?" Suggested Sandy.

"Yes!" Cardia cheered, clapping her hands together. "Exactly!"

And now Bubbles was laughing. "Oh. Well, I melted those stupid things. But hey, that's just more building character. Becides, Dipper's the one used to not having everything go his way, right? And Mabel's the one used to getting what she wants?"

"Okay, you officially know way too much about our lives to know about things like that." Dipper intervened. "How do you even know enough to say she 'gets what she wants?' You _had_ to have seen some of our, 'adventures,' before we even met .GIFfany."

"So that's not a _no_..."

"Bubbles!" Kathody said, for once with genuine worry in her eyes. "You're kind of putting us in hot water right now!"

"Hey, I like hot water! That's why I run a place full of showers, hot springs, steam rooms, and baths!"

"...Fine, I'll cover us myself! Dipper, we honestly don't know! .GIFfany and Dove are the two who _get_ the information about your past! They just send it to us! No sources! If they were Wikipedia editors, they would get so many messages for not citing their sources..."

"So you don't have anything useful to tell us either?" Wendy asked the band of five.

"Yeah, I do." Bubbles began. This was when Rose _finally_ made that group of five into a group of six, starting to wander into view. "Professor Leona is up next. She likes art and is sadistically hard to beat. Next is Sonia, a complete musical nightmare. And don't even get me started on Dian... even if you somehow cheat - and you look like the type that would - and get past them, I'll still only answer questions about those three. Because they are my best friends."

"All I can say about Leona is to _not_ try to tamper with her art!" Rose commented. "She will be a lot worse if you do!"

"Oh yeah," said Kathody with a sigh, "Even I wouldn't really do that."

"I don't want to do things like that anymore..." A hesitant Searah added, "I... Dipper, I _do_ care about them. It's just that... well... art may not be my thing. But I can respect that. Right?"

"I wouldn't because I know the pain of your work not being respected. Even if it is terrible work that can be replaced." Said Cardia. "I-I was talking about my own work! Not her's!"

"Can I join in to say that I wouldn't, even if it's not surprising because we are such great friends and I would never, _ever_ mess with what she considers precious?" Bubbles said with a shrug. This turned everyone over to Sandy.

"What? Oh... Leona doesn't have to worry about me. Most of her stuff is something I just try to stay away from. Unless she switched to, like, art on the body or something... that stuff is wicked nice, man." Sandy finished the chain. Sort of.

"She does now! You should check out her domain once this entire 'Gifocalypse' blows over!" Bubbles cheered, trying to keep her feet from hopping in place.

"...All of this will be forever noted." Dipper said. While he was able to say the sentence with a straight face, he had difficulty keeping it afterward. "Anyway, this place is a giant blue-green maze. Bubbles, we need directions. And don't mislead us to any whoopie cushions."

* * *

"Hey." Wendy said to the pack, now taking her turn holding it. (Despite having an inventory, it seemed to struggle carrying anything involving live people, as the pack itself faced some resistance on being placed inside.) "We're really close to civilization here, aren't we? Like, not like when we were in the middle of a desert or the ocean or a huge canyon?"

"Yes!" Cheered Bubbles, "And I think I know where you're going with this!"

"So was my domain..." Cardia added quietly.

"I haven't thought about this because I was too busy stressing out over sleep and thinking if it was safe to leave Waddles there a long time. But, what if we just decide to... you know, screw it? Just walk somewhere else. Rose talked about getting plane tickets if she couldn't send her card out this pack thing here."

"I knew it!" Bubbles rubbed her hands together. "Anyway, Dove is always watching you guys. Always. You try to go too far out of bounds when you have the option to take Wires, and... well... you're gonna have to deal with her temper tantrum."

"I believe I have more credibility with this party when I say that you do _not_ want to get Dove _actually_ angry by doing that." Rose said. For the following, she laid out a palm and made chopping motions on it with her other hand, for emphasis. "Following the domains in a linear fashion is the safest option you could take. Dove sees the town of Gravity Falls as an exception to this because... from her perspective, it is like an 'isolated shop town' or something like that. But you do not have to worry about that anymore, since... well... the card..."

"Eh, hiking down this huge mountain doesn't seem too fun anyway." Said Mabel. "But I'm having a blast with your 'game' so far! Except for the part where you tried to kill and cook Waddles..."

"I'm sorry." Said Cardia, with a sulk.

"That's okay! I'm sorry I brought that up again. I can tell you're good now, so I'm gonna cut that thread and try to start weaving with some new ones."

The violet-haired professor smiled and nodded. As Wendy was about to plug in the indigo card for the brief revisit, Bubbles began speaking again:

"Speaking of Dove... well... I have something _very important_ to tell you. Like, _really_. Think of this as my last little 'lesson' about us for now.

"Because we never had our hearts broken like the .GIFfany you are more familiar with, we can 'play things cool.' But we... can still be very violent and controlling. If a copy that isn't Dove _ever_ starts swearing at you... run. Don't question it. Just run. The little 'friendly game' would have ended, and in its place, a run to save your life."

With no further message from her, Wendy went through with plugging the card in, zipping the group into the Wire once again.

At the summit of the mountain, a lone, massive creature made out of candy howled into the mid-day sun.

* * *

"Wait, this is the first time we're going to a place we've already been..." Said Mabel, now juiced up on the time during the trip between Wires and given inspirational thought from the colors around the group. "Aren't you a little... scared?"

From inside the pack, the reactions ranged from small laughter to awkward looks to the side.

"Don't worry." Said Professor Rose. "I doubt anything will happen to previous domains. Dove will keep even the tiniest animals from invading them, she will surely keep out any supernatural spirits that like to haunt the abandoned. Those exist, by the way. Spirits sometimes tend to be drawn towards the abandoned."

"Ooh! The journals talk about that!" Said Dipper, "I could even show- oh."

"I was technically pretending to be one of those!" Cheered Kathody. "Actually, my whole group was! But yeah, seriously, Dove respects the places where we set ourselves up. She wouldn't do anything bad to any of them. Unless we asked her, then... well, she'd love tearing them apart!"

* * *

.GIFfany sighed as the cyan inverted heart gained a flashing red "OUT OF RANGE" message, matching those of the green, yellow, blue, orange, and violet hearts to the left of it.

"One more captured..." she said, "Oh well. At least I get to keep this place to myself, but still tell them all that I gave them a chance. After all, this is what I wanted."

"Hey, .GIFfany!" Said Stan, sliding in to the doorway.

She sighed. "What is it, Stan?"

"You're not gonna keep this place just to your copies and me and that other guy, right? This is gonna be some amusement park for all of your 'players?'"

"Yes. When it is finished tomorrow night."

"If you pay me - and no offense, it has to be real money, not gold coins - I bet you I can sell this to _any_ audience. You name 'em! Except children, because, let's face it. You're not kid-friendly and I can't work miracles."

She looked up for a moment, then smiled. "Oh. Oh! Actually, yes! When it comes to advertizing, you are a much better pick than most of my other potential candidates! Well, Burnda might be a good second pick, but... forget her."

* * *

Speaking of the devil, once again the aformentioned redhead was _once again_ skipping along the pink surface of the space fortress. Upon reaching a computer seemingly embedded into one of the hot pink buildings, she simply phased a hand into a monitors. Red-colored binary flashed on the screen, and just like that a simple diagram showing what looked like an incomplete circle popped out. A vaguely teardrop-shaped craft of sorts was shown moving off from the unfinished circle, flying out of its orbit and back to a depiction of Earth.

"Aaaaand yep! You were right about that secret floppy disk! The forcefields around the escape pods are gone! Instead of waiting for this to be finished before you can sneak out with any players that want to leave, or waiting for some kind of disaster to strike, we can now leave here any time we want!"

"Terrific." Said Ford, letting out an exhale of relief. "Still, this doesn't make any sense. If this will end up becoming a sort of superdating site for players, why would .GIFfany give them the option to leave?"

"She learned about ways to prevent rioting. She doesn't actually expect anyone to use them - or if they do, they are just 'no good critics who wanted to take us down.' The critics are why this works. .GIFfany learned about making herself not such an obvious target. What is more likely to cause a rebellion? Giving the option to leave when, if all goes right, nobody will ever want to, or to take away the option to leave from the beginning? And which would draw in more people in the long term? It is all about giving herself a more positive image."

"So she's becomming less possessive?"

"Mmm... you are being way way way way way _wayyyyyy_ too nice to her. I think that any copies that players up here 'befriend' will only end up hunting them down and trying to delete- oh, who am I kidding- kill them. Remember: We can be dangerous.

" _But that being said..._ " She opened her inventory, empty aside from a blue cube holding a single white card. "You know, I just took the last suit Professor Wendy let me have. This may be my last time here. So... what if... when I go back to Parícutin like .GIFfany wants me to... one of the captives happens to escape with me?"

"Are you inviting me to your domain?"

"Hey it's closer to Gravity Falls even if you will have to walk!" She resumed her fast-speaking starting with that line. "And my students are a lot more _stable_ than the ones over here. Come on you don't like her and I don't really like her let's leave and talk things out where we are a _little_ less watched."

"I can't say yes yet. Having only known you for a day, I still can't completely trust you."

"That is why I gave you the option to go to the escape pod! Just set the location to Gravity Falls, Oregon, and you can relax at home until your family gets back from their pretty safe little adventure!"

Ford _did_ take the card in his hands, but he examined it, looking it over from surface to surface. "I don't really know. I can't trust the escape pod either."

"Well I'll give you those choices. Actually that's only two! You could also go in to the escape pod and set it for something else! Just remember I love physics and I have a supercomputer for a brain! Doesn't that sound like good friend material for a genius like you?"

For reasons tied to a certain demon, Ford cringed at that a little, which made Burnda suck in air through her teeth at her last comment.

"I'll still think about it." He said.

Burnda shrugged. "Okay. Remember this is kinda like Occam's razor: The least untrustworthy path might be the truest? And the least untrustworthy person on here is...?"

She smiled more as she continued the question, leaning in to Ford for an answer.

"Yes, yes, I know you are my greatest ally at the moment."

Burnda crossed her arms, frowning at him for the first time.

"But I will give this some thought. Thank you, Professor Burnda."

This was when .GIFfany melted in from the ground, face completely blacked out aside from the sun-bright pink lights that were her eyes.

"Burnda, I am serious. The next time I spot you here, I will send Professor Dove to bring you back."

"You don't have to tell me again I can't even get any more protective suits to get here through space!"

"You said that last time."

"But I'm honest now!"

.GIFfany simply gripped the hair of the giggling Burnda, then plunged her into the metal below.

"Ford." She said bluntly. "While I do like how you are befriending one of my sisters, I would like you to pick someone else. Honestly, anyone else."

She disappeared into the ground herself, leaving Ford to stare at the single key card placed in his hand.

* * *

All while Dipper kept the rose-colored card in his own, riding through the space between Wires.

"I honestly hope .GIFfany takes Waddles and takes care of him in her place or something." Said a pouting Kathody. "Because coming back to Gif Bytes before going to _eeeevery single domaiiin_ is _borrrrriiing_!"

"Hey," Said Mabel, "Just think of it as... what's it called... level grinding?"

The professor with sun-yellow hair glared back at the girl. "That's not even close to what that means. Remember, like what Bubbles said, you're on a time limit before .GIFfany sends a _huge flood_ after you! Like, a flood of apocalyptic proportions!"

"She already calls this an apocalypse and it's not too bad." Dipper shrugged. "I think we can take our time. I mean, we do have a whole other day, after all."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

So! Thus begins Arc 2. While each chapter kind of has its own theme, I'd like each arc to sort of have a general, overarcing 'tone' to it. As you could tell by the ending, this is also where some of the B-plots finally start moving forward. Mostly because, while I do like an active ending, I don't want it get to the point where _so much_ happens compared to the rest of the story that everything near the beginning is practically redundant filler while the end contains virtually all of the real twists. I don't really want to name names since said names are stories I really like, but if I have to I'll peg _The Wonderful 101_ and _Kill La Kill_ , and even that's really stretching it more to "the whole latter section" and not "the whole ending." Well... you can honestly probably just ignore this whole closing note. I just wanted a little something to say about the new arc.

Actually, wait. I would like to confirm that the first three chapters are _totally_ not in tone with the rest of the story, and still kind of reminants of when this was still finding its footing. That's why they're a bit more awkward to read and have cringe-y jokes. It's also _sort of_ why chapter 1 appeared to have a lot of plot points that didn't lead up to anything, but trust me, I plan on going somewhere with some of these. And as you might be able to tell from the paragraph above this one (the one where I also tell you to ignore the whole note...), this might happen sooner than expected...

Next up is chapter 7. Either it will come out on the same month as this chapter, or more likely, chapters 7 and 8 will both be out on July. Have to make up for May being update-less, after all. I already got well around... maybe over half-way finished with chapter 7's rough draft since I worked on this and chapter 6 at roughly the same time. And after I finished the rough of this and went on to working on chapters 7 and _8_ at the same time (in addition to editing this)... well, compared to this and chapter 8, I wasn't as enthusiastic about writing 7. Some of it 'works' with me so far, some of it doesn't. That particular chapter is coming along slowly. 8 isn't, however, so expect that to come out shortly behind 7.

Well with me no longer basically working on _three_ chapters of this at once and thus "freeing up a slot," I feel that now is the time to bring up this really obscure crossover fic I have on that site, _The Simpsons Meet Brandy and Mr. Whiskers_. Why? Because starting tomorrow I'll start on its final chapter. If you don't care, then I'll try to promise ("try to" because I might forget) that this will be the last time I advertize another fic of mine on this unless it's "actually kind of important." And if you really want to keep following the Tale of the Open Slot, just go over there once that final chapter is finished to see what else I'm working on. Or, you know, you could always click on that "Great Pikmin Fan" at the top of the story to see what else I've written. I'll just recommend insta-hiding my bio and avoiding any story that has "SBIG" in the summary like the plague.


	7. Art

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 7: Art**

 **Beginning AN:**

I hope it's not too obvious that I was sort of working on this and chapter 6 at around the same time... or 7 and 8, after 6 was finished.

By the way, while I tried not to edit the chapters of this that I already published too much, before getting this out I re-read the first six chapters while charting a list of every flaw I could find. And... well, you could say I "patched" this again. There aren't any big changes, but if you notice anything different about the chapters now, that's why. For one thing, every professor now has something in her hair. Think of it as like a faux-bow or something like that. I also finally got rid of a joke I was ashamed of back in the second chapter, by just tweaking it a little. I might elaborate on that soon enough. Sooner if you count my Tumblr.

* * *

After the first of presumably many token Waddles check-ups, the team pressed onwards to what Dipper hoped wasn't the Amazon rainforest-

This next Wire dumped them out in a rainforest. With an oddly sturdy, oddly square sign apparently made of wood reading "Welcome to the Amazon Art Club!"

Dipper had to get Searah out of his head. _Fast._

Within eyesight from the Wire was a quartet of buildings. Three of them weren't larger than a standard one-story house: One was painted a solid red, one purple, and one orange. The fourth, on the other hand, really stood out - in Soos's case, it was actually the first he noticed, which drew his eyes to the other three. This one was just about as wide as the others, but it reached up high into the airs above and pierced the layers of leaves in the rainforest. A single, diagonal azure stripe decorated this tall structure, but the most noteworthy thing was its primary coloration. It matched that of the Wire.

"There's our next target." Said Dipper.

Everyone was already expecting something to jump out as they crossed the intersection between the four buildings. Yet, oddly enough, that little jump scare or chain reaction that started with an innocent student-AI peeking her head out wondering what's going on never happened. They made it to the door of the blue-and-pink building, finding its front door to be completely unlocked.

Compared to the previous domain - in fact, the previous six domains - the outfits of the students were a bit of a breath of fresh air. About half of them were wearing what seemed like the 'standard' .GIFfany school uniform, but on closer inspection had skirts that went down to their feet. The rest had an array of outfits in various colors, but the general theme appeared to be: Cover everything but the hands (and even then, a select few had gloves) and head, and all of them must have foot-long skirts for the lower halves. Aligning the walls were a number of portraits of the same sweaty-looking, overweight man unknown to any of the group. The only actually naked .GIFfany copy in this current floor seemed to be the silver statue in the center of the room, standing on one leg with the other bent behind her. Both of the statue's arms were behind as though she was in a dive, her mouth perpetually giving off a stream of water into a small fountain below in the shape of a circle. Next to that circle was a larger body of water, linked by a small stream, in the shape of a 'G.' Naturally, they all turned to look at the band as they arrived.

"They're here! They're here! They are all here!" One of them cheered.

"This is the L Building, the eastmost point in the Amazon Art Club! Domain 7!" Explained another.

"Professor Leona wanted to see you! Just take that elevator up there. She is on the top floor." Said yet another. "Enjoy your stay at the Amazon Art Club!"

As they walked over to _yet another_ elevator, the 'fountain' stopped generating water and began tapping Soos on the shoulder.

"Hey." She said. "How was my fountain act? Was it good?"

Dipper in particular jumped back, pointing at the offending naked silver .GIFfany.

"AHH! I _knew_ that was going to happen, but you _still_ startled me!"

* * *

Apart from a number of bronze statues of .GIF- no. Apart from a number of 'bronze statues of .GIFfany,' there was only one copy on the top floor, making her the obvious candidate for this domain's professor. Of course, she had amaranth-colored hair. Her skin an odd, unnatural yellow, and she seemed to have her hair tied into three especially long trails or braids. Within the near-front of her hair was a strange, moving blob of paint: red, yellow, and blue moved around with no visible blending, somehow not running all over her head. Her clothing was, at the moment, hidden behind the large desk she was seated behind, though since her feet were placed on top of it the group could make out a pair of black boots splattered with paints of various colors. Arranged on her desk was a large bowl of fruit, the bowl of which matching colors with her hair and Wire. Tucked away at the side were a series of azure-colored musical instruments, a set of purple gas masks, and a stack of cyan soap bars. She also appeared to be toying around with one such soap bar in her hand.

"Ah. I suppose you already know a little about me." She began, keeping eye contact on the soap bar the entire time. "Professor Leona. The highest-ranking of the four overseers of this domain. Let me guess... you just want the card that will direct you towards one of my best friends, no?"

"Sorta." Soos replied. "I mean, in the end we kinda want to make it to where Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are, then maybe beat .GIFfany again, but if there are no shortcuts to get there then yeah, we'll have to see your friend."

"You already 'captured' one of them in that modern garbage that is a container of yours. And while I don't believe it will be a timeless tool and that it will succumb to destruction on its own obsession with being 'inventive' you still have Professor Bubbles in there. However, if you insist on challenging me... well, I still won't fight you directly just yet."

She snapped her fingers. Just like that, three more AIs dropped from the ceiling. Not that anybody was particularly looking up there in the first place. Clad in heavy black ninja costumes, the only things telling them apart were the colors of their masks and the eyes visible from the suits: One had red, one purple, and one orange.

"Raffaela! Donna! Michelle! Hide the keys, just like we practiced yesterday!"

Leona tossed the azure card into some sort of metal, fuchsia safe with four keyholes. All three of her own... what, 'bodyguards' again? Whipped out a key matching their associated color, just to turn one of them in the keyhole of the same color. Leona sighed, took out a blue key, and locked the associated lock with that too. All three of the assisting AIs melted back into the ground, turning into electricity that danced its way past the floors and out through the walls, and Leona set the safe right there on her table.

"Don't even try to get my key before beating the other three overseers." She said, herself melting into the floor. Her own lightning crawled up the wall, then across the ceiling, before she popped out of it standing upside-down. "I'll stay out of reach until then. Also, you're free to take that safe to the Wire if you want to. But... unless you have some kind of high-powered energy thing, that's not getting opened without the keys."

It was also because of this that the gang was able to see Leona in full for the first time. Namely, how the professor was dressed in fairy large, equally paint-splattered black overalls and a small white shirt underneath. Also notable was how her hair defied gravity, appearing to point towards the ceiling as she stood tall at the peak of the room.

"I crafted this _just_ so that I will be out of reach if I went up here. So, come on you modern era-loving fad-eaters, get the keys and come back here. _Then_ we'll talk."

Mabel tried to jump up and claw at her a number of times, without any success. Dipper sighed.

"Come on, let's try to play her game. That's what you would do."

"...I know, but way she just did that is- well, rude. What did she mean by modern era-loving fad-eaters, anyway?"

"Believe me, if we could understand these freaks, this would be a lot easier."

On the way out, all of the 'statues' in the room turned over to the team to give them a "Good luck!" Again, this still made Dipper jump a little.

* * *

"Should we take this one split up? It might cover less time." Soos suggested. "I could take the red one, Wendy would go after the purple one, and Dipper and Mabel can team up on the orange?"

"No, splitting up sounds exactly like what .GIFfany- I mean, Leona would want." Said Dipper.

"Ha!" Leona herself was heard even from the top of her headquarters, shouting out the top window. Still on the ceiling. "Really? If I wanted you to split up from the beginning, I would have had four assistants instead of three. But we fit the theme with being named after classical artists."

"I thought you named yourselves after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles..." Said Mabel.

"What? Of course not! Learn your history! And I thought you were someone who _liked_ color and artsy stuff. Hrmph! No, it makes sense! Of course _you_ wouldn't know about the classics!"

"But... you have the right colors, and they're ninjas... and somewhere around teenagers?"

"We're twenty."

"And you're kind of mutant-ish..."

"I'll have you know that I'll never model any good group of mine after disgusting sewer monsters! Now go over there and get those keys!"

She slammed the window down (up?), then disappeared from sight. This was when Dipper finally got to say something that was at his mind. "Wait. If she wanted us to stay together... and we split up... no, no. Nevermind. Or... Soos, you might be on to something."

Picking randomly, Dipper cracked the door to the orange-yellow room to the south. He immediately scowled from what he saw inside, then slammed it shut again. "Nope. Forget it. I'm not going in there alone. We're sharing the pain of this domain."

"Yeah," Wendy agreed with a shrug. "I'm more of a 'share the pain with everybody equally' type of girl. And based on what we saw so far, I _have_ to see you guys handle this. This invasion has been a downright riot so far!"

* * *

What gave Dipper such a negative reaction in the first place was the large disco ball hovering in the center of this opening room, with a number of giant silver tiles lining the bottom that looked like they were ready to light up at any moment. Just by the door was a flat ground of a more traditional, floor-like tiles. The kind you would see in a waiting room. There was currently no AI in sight, save for the ninja-one with the mask matching the exterior.

"Hello." Said the orange-black clad ninja .GIFfany. "I am Michelle, and you just stepped into my tile maze. I'm glad you picked me first, I guess. That or you dealed with the other two really really fast and now you're about to insta-beat me too."

Soos attempted to press forward, just to be stopped right before crossing over the larger tile variety. He pressed his hands around - some kind of invisible barrier, keeping him out.

"I have this cool invisible wall thing placed over there? Uh... I don't want you walking on it before it's even turned on. Now, the rules are really simple: You're kind of in our weapons area. Because every good dating sim character protective of their loved ones needs to have weapons. Um, that is what .GIFfany said. It is sort of what I believe in, but I would not use those exact words unless I was getting paid. And .GIFfany automatically pays anybody who says that three hundred gold coins. Now, there are four different types of tiles, and this will test if you can clear the puzzle in five minutes. If you can't... I'll try to capture you right now. There's four types of tiles."

She cleared her throat before going on. "Tiles that are blue are completely safe. Tiles that are _ablue_ will be counted as an instant capture, so avoid them. Tiles that are _tablue_ will turn you to the right, then one space forward, so look out for tablue tiles next to ablue tiles. And finally, there's the tone-darkened blue tiles. They will shoot you forward three tiles automatically, but passing over any effect of the other tiles in between. So, you should really plan yourself, and look at the tiles ahead so that you will not land on any ablue tiles."

"...What?" Asked Wendy, "Two of those aren't even real words!"

"To an untrained eye, no, but to a trained eye, ablue is a shade of blue that _just barely_ has green in it. Tablue is a shade that _just barely_ has red in it. And a tone darker... is just _slightly_ darker."

As this implied, Michelle flipping the switch led to all the tiles turning into what, at first glance, looked like the exact same shade of blue. And on second glance. And on third. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy all looked back up at the ninja-clad copy in disbelief.

"Oh yeah. And there will be lasers in addition to the time limit, to keep you going."

Out of the door from the other side, some more .GIFfany copies began trickling in. These were, as Michelle implied, armed with especially large cannons that even they seemed to struggle holding. All of them appeared to be in the same, uniform complete gray set of armor that anyone could tell wasn't really accurate to the Renaissance.

"So... girls, if you want you can start firing."

Seemingly unaffected by the glowing tiles, they all navigated to the far left and right walls and appeared to be toying around with their guns. Starting to sweat, Dipper raised his voice. "Can we... is this the time we start?"

"Yeah sure, I don't really care. I personally don't like this puzzle but Leona insisted on having some kind of color-tile-based puzzle in some way. And I ended up being the one somehow stuck with having to do it."

One of the armor-clad .GIFfany copies fired a ray gun just _barely_ over the gang, causing all four of the humans to drop down with their hands over their heads. Based on how Michelle and the other armored copies had to jump out of the way once the yellow laser soared around the air, this somehow didn't follow the plan despite the ninja-dressed copy's command. This was a little detail confirmed when Michelle stood back up, waving her hands around.

"Woah, woah, woah!" She said, "Not so close!"

Meanwhile, Mabel analyzed the board and began tapping one of the tiles in front of her - though not the one immediately in front, the one to the right of it. No reaction. Edging herself on the platform while the AIs got on the ground to fire your typical spy-movie lasers at the floor's level, she began hopping across them, appearing to only pick selective platforms.

"Yeah!" She cheered, "Guys, I don't know what you're talking about! I can see what color is what just fine!"

After stepping on one tile in particular, she let out a cheerful "Woah!" as some kind of force slid her forward over two others. When one student moved her laser to try to sweep it past Mabel's feet, she hopped in place.

"You'll have to try better than that!" She cheered, stepping on a few remaining tiles and getting dragged around in ways that matched the description of at least one of the two drag-type tiles. A few seconds later, and Mabel danced her way to the goal point, causing one of the followers to drop her weapon for brief applause. After looking around and only getting stares in response, especially from fellow copies, she put a hold to that.

"Yeah." Said Michelle. "The other three have to make it across."

Mabel turned around, placing a hand on her chin. "You guys can't tell the difference? Okay... go forward, forward, right, foeward, left, back, back, left, right, forward, left, left, forward, right, and from there the tone-darkened blue tiles will just pull you to a harmless blue tile and you just take one more step forward!"

The trio attempted to step forward, just to end up in a large pile with a yellow laser slowly falling down on them. The AI manning this accomplished this effect by slowly lowering her knees to a kneel, blatantly re-adjusting her feet to avoid slipping and falling.

"We have to do this one at a time." Said Dipper.

Slipping himself out of the pileup easily, Dipper was the first to go. Forward, followed by another forward was an easy enough set of directions to follow. After that and leaping in place to avoid a laser that was coming up from behind, however, he looked over to his sister.

"Do you mean my right or your right? Or, the right from the start or the right from where we are now?"

"The right from where you are now! Just go over to that panel on the right- oh, watch out!"

Dipper was barely able to jump in time to dodge a laser that had just backed around and tried swinging at him from the front. Meanwhile, to avoid the AI lowering herself by the starting point, Soos and Wendy had tried balancing themselves on the first available platform. The first of the two following after the latter. With a bit of hopping and the other two people having to ignore Mabel's directions, Dipper managed to make his way to the end, breathing heavily.

"That was confusing..."

Wendy was able to make the various steps and dodge the lasers much easier, following Mabel's eye-glances to remind herself of which colors were the right ones instead of the directions that would probably take too long to follow. When the lasers started going after her as she was being pulled three tiles ahead, she even flipped in mid-air to pass over them. Wendy performed a final hop, landing right by the twins and looking over to Soos.

"Don't worry guys! I remember the directions perfectly! All those hidden forests and cave dungeons were leading up to this-"

"Aaaaand here's where I remind you that we .GIFfanys hate playing by the rules. Why are you?"

Michelle said that with a bit of a giggle. One finger-snap later, and all lasers were immediately directed at him. After Soos noticed that they were only shining yellow light on him, he stood tall in front of the group and puffed out his chest.

"You call that a laser? I'm immune to these!"

"Noooo..." While trying to contain it, she went out in a larger fit of laughter. Somehow, this made her want to remove the head portion of her outfit, shaking her yellow-orange hair to let it flow around. "The lasers are just a metaphor. I'm not playing nice anymore. You are captured now. I'll let Leona decide whether to send you up to the Construction Site or give the other three a chance to get their Soos back. I mean, if we start with _Soos_ , I don't think .GIFfany would care about anything else we do as much... it won't really be as fun for us, since we consider these fine arts as a way to impress."

With that, Soos was lifted into the air and surrounded by a series of glowing orange bars arranged to a sphere. With a large keyhole on it. He was barely able to toss the Illegal Prime Neutralizer towards Wendy before being completely sealed in. Michelle laughed as she was about to float through the walls into the next room. Halfway through emerging, however, the tile puzzle clicked off, and .GIFfany's image appeared out of the tiles themselves. Since, even with the supernatural magic goodness of the .GIFfany army, the tiles could apparently only each display one color at a time, the resulting image of her was exceptionally blocky even by her standards.

"Leona, this 'puzzle' goes against- wait. You are not Leona. Nevermind."

The puzzle clicked off completely, and Michelle resumed phasing herself into the next room.

* * *

Leona _still_ remained stuck to the ceiling as her cell phone rang. Since the group left, she had made herself comfortable on an inverted seat while reading a newspaper from _Parícutin Hotties Daily_ with the headline "TODAY'S NEWS: DOMAINS 5 AND 6 HIT BY 'THE SILENCE!' PRAYERS SENT FOR PROFESSOR LEONA." She laughed as she read the speculation on why the domains stopped exporting and whether or not Leona was 'good enough' to stop whatever 'Silence' was out there.

 _Of course she was._

She sighed while answering her phone. Knowing the answers that the publishers of various articles didn't was always fun. This included looking at speculation from the past.

"Hello?" She asked upon finally answering. Knowing .GIFfany's persistance, she would keep trying to call to get that 'urgent message' in.

"I saw one of your students- wait. Ugh! Are you upside-down?"

"Yes. Gravity inversion."

"Why?"

"Each of us professors has different 'themes' if you will. I wanted to pick a bit more 'theme' to this on purpose. So I decided, why not have this also be an area with a bit of an inversion theme?"

"That is an awful idea, but not the reason why I called. I saw one of your students crafting a 'tile puzzle?' What sort of garbage is that? Why toy around with them with these 'puzzles!' You're supposed to attack them directly! Throw the entire force of your students after them!"

"If all fourteen of us did that, then they wouldn't survive." Leona outright dropped the newspaper. It rose to the ceiling. "You were one copy, with no extra powers and no real physical form. The Pines barely survived against your greatness."

"Of course they did!"

"So... by that logic, what would throwing over two million of us at them give them a chance?"

"Obviously they wouldn't! Nobody is better than us .GIFfanys, and I'm the best of them all!"

"Rose wouldn't want to, so it wouldn't be fun for her. And nobody else would get a chance to, so that wouldn't be fun for them. If we all followed your orders from the start, Rose would have won the contest, and your final project would have been a huge stupid space forest garden for the hungry. If I followed your orders, then it would become a giant art center. Do either of those sound pleasant to you?"

"I- you- my orders- ...no. No, it does not."

"Good. We're just having fun with our powers. That was the entire reason why you gave us this chance, after all."

"It is, but... well... making a huge tile puzzle... it's kind of like what Burnda would do! You know, there's a reason I assigned her near the end of the chain! She'll have almost no chance of winning!"

"The chain is already set. I don't see how you can change it. If you don't like what I'm doing, don't watch and wait until I lose or something. Then say you told me so."

"But... it's..."

"I'm just doing exactly what you wanted us to do. Why don't you like that?"

"Fine!"

"Good. Now, don't you have some shopping malls to create or something?"

Leona heard .GIFfany sigh on the other line. "As a matter of fact... Kathody's students _are_ putting in a little too much horror-related stuff on our rip offs of Edgy on Purpose... I should go talk to them..."

"What's wrong?" She smirked, knowing that .GIFfany could see that. "Based on what you say about Professor Sandy, I thought you wanted the professors to 'act smarter.'"

"Only if they agree with me..."

"But I do! You just do not like how I do it!"

"Ugh, shut up!"

Click.

Welp, back to reading about how the AI news unknowingly twisted a pair of twelve year-olds, a laid-back cool fifteen year old, and a kind-hearted tourist shop employee into some kind of formless abomination that has it out for sapient video game characters for some reason.

Isn't the news funny?

* * *

As Michelle had promised, the following room did in fact contain a large number of weapons in it. Knives, cannons, more lasers, guns... the selection was mostly dominated by knives, many of which had black handles with red stripes on them. Michelle herself looked into her inventory and armed herself with nunchaku.

Wendy pushed one of the cannons in to block the door from the army of armor-clad copies, and once they started floating through the walls themselves, flat-out switched the pack on and vacuumed all of them up. Michelle looked back at the remaining AIs, the crowd in the room - a pretty huge number of them - and waved a hand.

"Er, try possessing those things and firing them at the humans. Maybe that will work-"

Right after saying that, she too was sucked into the pack, letting an orange-colored key slip out of her outfit's sleeve.

A room away, the bars holding Soos began to turn purple. His cage began drifting as well, just ever-so slightly to the door.

Back in the other room, the AIs that remained simply stared at the group as Wendy tried to remove her own barricade.

"Hey... we should still follow her orders. I think." Said one of them.

This started a pretty nasty cluster-combo all at once. The mass pile of knives were tossed all around, flinging themselves across the room with great energy. Cannons fired rainbows of paint everywhere, which only served to make the room messier. At one point, Mabel narrowly avoided what seemed to be a massive axe that dropped from the ceiling, completely unnoticed by the group prior. (They _have_ to check the ceilings of these domains more often from now on.)

Thankfully, it all collapsed on itself in less than a minute. Something about the paint getting on everything resulted in the sharp weapons being stuck to either one-another or the ground, being so coated in a thick membrane of paint that they were virtually harmless, cannons were jammed, and it all ended up falling under in a large pileup. Some of the AIs were stuck inside their electronic forms of combat. Rolling her eyes, Wendy picked up as many of them as she could before they regained their senses, phased out of the pile, and escaped through the walls.

* * *

Rushing back to the prior room, they saw the purple ninja copy knocking a large, square opening in the wall leading outside, staring at the recolored sphere of bars Soos was kept in.

"Oh. Greetings." She said. "I am Donna. I see you conquered the southern M Building, I reside in the northern D Building."

"Easy." Said Wendy, now taking control of the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. "Just give us Soos, your key, and nobody gets hurt."

"I would prefer moving this confrontation to my sector of the domain. Where I'm in charge of fruit growing."

"Wasn't Rose in charge in fruit?" Asked Dipper.

"Yes, but above that she prioritized vegetables. And what fruit she did produce was rather bland and ordinary. Also, since she was gone we had to improvise and make our on selection of various vegetation now that we spent a day knowing that the domain doing so will be out of comission. Please, meet me in the gardens."

Using lightning, she blasted a large hole in the wall, flew out while telekinetically dragging Soos's jail-bubble through said hole, and blasted another hole in her own building just so that she could fit the guy inside.

* * *

Donna sighed as she placed a hand on her hip. "There was a door. I can not compute why you did not simply take that path."

Mabel, who had just finished leaping from the pile of rubble by this wall hole, cheered with her hands out. "For fun!"

Dipper, still working his way down without getting caught on the rocky metal chunks, blinked. "Wait. I never thought of that. I just assumed since this was the bigger entrance-"

"I didn't either," Said Wendy, "But I also think this right here does a good job at making fun of you girls."

"Well. Fine. We mostly make fruit here just to draw it, anyway. Raffaela's art studio is where we end up making the actual paintings, which we use to impress our dates. Dates that are into the _fine arts of the past_."

Getting a closer look inside of the purple building, the group of .GIFfany copies somehow managed to make Rose's general gardening moves actually look menacing. First of all, the room lacked an actual roof, so the sunlight shone directly on the garden and illuminated this room with natural lights (though the large lights that lined the walls made it pretty clear that they could turn on artificial lights at night if they wanted to). This time, however, the AIs shot cold, unchanging, knife-sharp stares at the whole group while watering or tending to the various plants around. As implied by Donna herself, there was definitely a few things off about what it was being grown. An upscale in size was one thing, another was that few of these seemed like any regular fruit the group was used to. Deep blues that _look_ like they should be a fruit color, but actually aren't, fit the description of some of them. Very unusual shapes, including alarming yellow pyrimadal forms, were the norm rather than the exception. Mabel was certain one of them hissed at an AI.

"But those are monster super-fruits!" Dipper said, unsure whether that detail really mattered.

"I bend the regulations a lot. Leona cannot criticise me, for she does the same with the instance of .GIFfany leading this- well, it would be insulting to projects to call the 'Gifocalypse' a 'project.'"

"Yeah, I agree." Said Soos. "This is clearly more of a big artsy-experimental thing. And not something with hard rules that's supposed to be taken too seriously."

Donna snapped her fingers. "Exactly! And this is why I feel we would be execellent friends if not for my attempt at capturing your friends."

"Um, yeah, about that. Why don't you just make capturing me your guide for when you 'win' the 'game' you guys are playing? Dipper and Mabel didn't really do anything to .GIFfany, except like running for their lives from her. And Wendy wasn't involved at all. If you could just not have to capture any of them, or Mr. Pines and his brother, that would be-"

"But then we would have already won." Donna shrugged. "Are you saying you want to forfeit the game? Your forfeit overrides all others."

"Well, no, but-"

"Come on Soos!" Mabel pleaded, "Just roll with it! We can try to rescue you and it will be fun!"

"Oh! Well in that case, let's go!"

"Excellent!" Donna clapped, "Now, I have a craving for sending out our experimental fruits after you..."

"Oh." Dipper remarked, his hand quickly falling on his forehead. "Right. They're alive. Of course they're alive. I should have known, after everything I've seen all summer."

This was confirmed when every not-tomato, not-berry, and Strange Cubic Thing™ opened its mouth to reveal row after row of sharp teeth.

"In our planned _Romance Academy 8_ spinoff, you don't just eat food! Food can also eat you!"

More than enough proof of this happened when an overgrown, blue-and-yellow-striped tomato lept at Dipper's face.

Thankfully, Wendy finally got her chance to directly kill something in this little adventure. With a swing of her axe, this not-tomato got a quick slash to the side, which was seemingly enough damage so that it harmlessly tackled on Dipper, motionless with its rows of choppers closed.

"At least they're easier to take care of than the AIs." He said, between desperate, deep breaths.

"Heh. Quite so. Quite so indeed." Donna snorted. "But they have less manners! Fruits, after them! And don't hold back!"

And that started the pile-up. Genetic fruit after genetic fruit tacking the trio, forcing them on the ground. A swirl of colors and gargled hisses later, and the various food items were all shoving at one-another to try to get at their potential victims.

"Hey! Food! Remember! Don't eat them!" Donna directed. "Bring them to me, so I can honorably bring them to Professor Leona, so she can honorably bring them to .GIFfany, so I can have one third of one half of .GIFfany's ultimate project to myself!"

That statement somehow made a few of them grow pseudo-arms. With one foot to kick at the ground, Wendy slid herself out from under her particular fruit-pileup. They didn't notice, even after Donna sighed and started pointing at the escapee.

"Come on! Go after her! It's not very hard- I mean difficult! I mean, pursuit this threatening- you know what I mean, since I am not at Dove's level of speech yet."

All this did was effectively stun the fruits. They 'looked' on in confusion (though none of them had eyes), and Wendy stared at the pileup. The latter smirked when she saw the twins's hands punch their way through the killer food. _They're doing great_ , she thought.

"Augh!" Donna yelled in disgust. "Fine! Students - I mean, other students becides me, well I oversee things but - go after them! This whole fruit plan was terrible! I can see why Rose only wanted to grow 'ordinary' things!"

"What does fruit even have to do with art, anyway?" Asked Wendy.

"Ever heard of painting fruit bowls?"

"Oh. Right. That. I... _guess_ that makes sense? Whatever, if you think you're relevant, you're relevant. I don't want to question your 'video game logic.'"

Immediately after saying that, Wendy was caught by the crowd and lifted up towards the cage Soos was inside. She braced for impact as they appeared to toss her right into it - bars any everything - only for her to end up phasing right through the spherical shape. Soos gave her a friendly wave as she looked through her new prison to see Dipper and Mabel sneaking their way out of the fruit pile.

Helping manners was Donna holding her head on a palm and waving with the other hand, saying "Go away fruit. You are all a bunch of sweet, sweet failures. Or sour ones in some cases. In fact - some of you girls, let's say five of you... just prepare to eat them. Cut them up or something."

Dipper surfaced from the large, messy 'fruit bowl' first, taking a huge breath into the fresh (if extremely humid, but he couldn't really choose otherwise) air.

"Oh look! The twins are still, well, alive I guess. Horray. Girls just tackle them or something I don't really know I don't care."

Time was bought for them when the two students that dove after them ended up knocking into one-another, a failed tackle that earned them a facepalm from Donna's side.

"Quick!" Dipper said in a small panic, rushing over to catch as Wendy tossed him the IPN. "Mabel, we have to-"

They were surrounded from all directions by copies before he could even finish that sentence. Well, not _all_ directions. One particular direction housed a number of very confused fruits. Some of the latter group appeared to start nursing the sliced member of their kind... but after determining that it was not moving, they went in to start feasting on the remains.

"Hey fruit things!" Mabel shouted to the apparent cannibals, "Do you think you could work with us?"

"They were engineered by Donna and her army," Dipper replied, "I don't really think they-"

All of them were 'facing' Mabel at the moment.

"You heard me! You there! Tomato-looking thing! Why not throw yourself at Donna's face?"

"Ugh, don't just stand there!" Aformentioned ninja suit-clad leader said, "I know I said 'just stand there' when we were preparing this, but by then our fruit was actually doing something!"

"Maybe because the training bags we used were filled with freshly-grilled hot dogs?" Said one of the background students.

"Just perform the combat maneuvers!"

"Even if it will endanger the fruit specimen?"

Mabel, at least, already ducked herself _back into_ the crowd of killer food. Apparently she decided that, if they had no plans on hurling themselves towards Donna's group, Mabel was going to have to do that for them. And thus, she rose out with one of them in her hand.

"Let my friends go!" Mabel demmanded.

"Or what?" Asked Donna. "You are clearly outnumbered, and as soon as my personal group of followers re-enter crazy ex-girlfriend attack mode, you will end up paying."

"Ex-girlfriend? We were never even girlfriends in the first place..." One of them spoke up. "Neither are you. The only one with a good date here is Leona, and she has a good date _now_. So she is not an ex-girlfriend."

Before she could think of a counter-attack, Donna found herself having a large, blue and yellow-stripped eggplant-shaped fruit splatter her from behind. One shake later, and it was all off.

"If any of you take one step closer," Shouted Mabel, "I'll ruin your whole garden! I can turn this into one giant fruit salad, you know!"

Donna seemed to be torn with whether she should gasp or shrug. So she did a combination: Air was clearly sucked between her teeth, yet her shoulders slowly rose and fell. "Well, on one hand, we kind of made those to be expendable. On the other hand, it is valuable research... I guess if you get rid of _all_ of our discovered and farmed super-fruits then we will have trouble starting anew again."

"Then I'll do that!"

 _Now_ she gasped.

"My work! No! How would you feel if-"

"Bubbles melted the journals written by my uncle!"

"Really?" Donna turned to the side. "In that case, I will have to talk with Leona about her choices in making friends..."

"Good! Because you'll have plenty of time to talk to her inside _this!_ "

Taking in several of the side copies first, Mabel had long whipped out the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, borrowed straight from Dipper's hands. Once that stream of suction hit Donna, she at first appeared to take out a bo staff before placing it back into her inventory. She simply sighed, dropping the purple key and looking over to the cage becides her.

Aformentioned cage started moving again, this one _noticeably_ more violent than the last time. Several AI copies had to jump out of the way to avoid getting smacked by the imprisoning ball, as it crashed out of the garden's wall and into the walls of the red building. Mabel still picked up a few more, before this group, as well, zipped into the giffinium walls, remaining hidden.

Based on Soos's screams and Wendy's " _DUDE!_ " that final unexplored structure must have something interesting.

* * *

Eh. Compared to Bubbles's domain, and it was important to note that not _every_ AI there had their bits blocked from view, or Sandy's partial-nudist domain, the naked figure drawing in the west section wasn't that big of a shock. Well, okay, the body painting section where "artist" copies used other nude ones as canvases was definitely weird, but ignorable. Some of them weren't looking at what they were painting or their paintings themselves, instead focused on the mirror held in one hand while the brush was on another. Again, still weird, but ignorable.

At least, until a red-headed giggling AI turned to face the twins in horror.

"Oh. You are at the R Building _already_? Jeez, based on what .GIFfany told us about you guys catching up to her at the mall, I thought you were slow! Shoot, I have to get into character! Um..."

She lept off the pedestal she was standing on. What followed... at first, all four humans present thought she was doing The Worm for some reason, but she was actually sliding her ninja gear over her unfinished blue-and-orange squid-pattern paint. Despite the outfit including pants and the woman not changing her shape at any point, she somehow slid into this flawlessly and stood up fully dressed, mask included. The only part that was left was her red mask, which she took off an easel behind her to tie around her head.

"Oh, by the way, Bit-ney, could I see your work please?"

The AI aformentioned mask was near nodded, and turned her masterpiece around, showing the last member of the squad and all four humans that she managed to draw a frame-perfect, highly detailed capture of the AI post-dressed yet still flopping on the floor.

"Excellent! Now, to get my game face on."

She turned back to the group and whipped out a pair of sai, immediately leaping to the twins.

"Let's cut to the point! I am Raffaela, and since these two floated over to me, you must have figured out how to beat Michelle and Donna! And because of that I don't like you!"

"To be honest," Said Dipper, "Beating Kathody and Searah was a lot harder."

"Erugh, you're even worse than I thought, ranking us on power like that! Well, I don't want to spend too much time playing around! Let's fight!"

Amusingly, the first thing she did was leap between Dipper and Mabel, forcing both of them to take a step back. Despite not being the armed one, she faced Dipper first.

"Hey, do you know one advantage of making your hair red ahead of time is?" She asked. Even under her mask, he could tell she was trying not to crack a smile. "Especially one with green eyes, even though I myself do not have green eyes? I can use a distraction art on you!"

He already knew where she was going even before she reached at the sides of her shirt. Dipper sighed.

"I already saw a _lot_ of .GIFfanys with red hair. I'm over that now. If you think you can-"

He found himself getting gripped by the jacket with her other hand and tossed into the cage. As with Wendy before him, he simply melted into the bars on his way in, yet they solidified before he could be on the way out. Lifting a foot up on a chair, Raffaela struck one of her sai skywards.

"I can make you _think_ that I will distract you in that way, but use it as a distraction for another way! Now," she began to move her eyes towards the other Pine, "Mabel - woah, having two eyes instead of seeing out a screen is weird - time to settle this brawns versus brawns! Army, go after her-"

She was instantly picked up by the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, dropping her key while crying out "I forgot we shouldn't get too close without possessing something! It may be a short-ish ranged weapon, but it's very powerfulllll! Even .GIFfany had to train for a day before becoming imuneeeee!"

That last sentence made Mabel chasing several of the other copies - artist or model, so long as they seemed to be prepped to follow Raffaela's last order (many of which being confused due to her own capture) - around a bit less of an energy-giver than she had hoped for. Once enough of them merged within the metallic walls and became unreachable, she looked over at the cage just in time to see it turn blue and float back to the 'L building.'

"There?" She said, with less certainty than she would. "The more of these guys in here," she patted the Neutralizer for emphasis, "The less backup .GIFfany should have. But... is she really immune to this?"

"We'll figure out something." Said Dipper, reaching his hand around the prison's interior to find some kind of way to slip out. The bars were just _barely_ close enough to prevent a full-body escape, though he could probably slip half of him outside. This did not sound like a good idea. "For now, get to Leona, and set us free!"

"Oh yeah," Wendy commented, "What was that about you being over seeing naked redheads _now_?"

Dipper instead turned to his sister, gripping the bars as they shifted to rose. Then back to blue. Then to rose again. Then they hovered on gray for a moment... before settling on rose. "And hurry! B-because of the thing on the fourth day!"

* * *

Following the prison sphere did not lead to another wall-break - even on its way out of the R Building, it manuvered through the previous hole in the giffinium. Upon reaching Leona's layer, the triad's cage lifted itself up through the trees and was firmly placed on the ceiling. The bars briefly turned blue again before flipping back to rose-pink.

In the roof, Mabel could barely hear the professor of the place telling herself, "Ugh! Should I use my 'whole .GIFfany army color' or my 'artist elite group color?' Choices, choices..."

It _was_ a bit unnerving to have the copy-populated area suddenly be deserted, apart from some visible electricity trails making their way across the walls and ceiling of the setting. Yet this did not slow Mabel down from dashing to the elevator and pressing that top floor button.

She did have to take a deep breath as the doors opened. And felt a little odd about having to do that when they opened to reveal that Leona was sitting on a chair... that was on the ceiling. The upside-down professor gave a casual wave to Mabel, before directing her attention to some new additions to the room:

The walls, beginning on both sides of the window and breaking at either side of the elevator's doors, now had all part of them except for the top and bottom taken over by a room-spanning painting. The right side depicted a large university. The left, a field of cherry blossom trees with a lake view. Along with these features added, the faux-statues of .GIFfany from the last visit were subtracted.

Leona started floating in the air, still positioned with her head pointing towards the ground, and lightly moved a palm downwards (technically upwards). The entire ceiling lifted itself up. One flick of the same wrist later, and the giffinium roof moved off in the same direction, before a similar glass roof came in to replace it. Leona let her hand go, heard the thunk confirming its placement, and pointed at the cage above.

"So that they can see our battle. If someone crafts something yet no-one else is allowed to see it, is that truly art? No, no it isn't... art like mine deserves the biggest audience imaginable! As a matter of fact-"

She made similar hand motions yet again, only this time, once the glass ceiling was slid off, she dragged the prison-bubble in its entirety to the building. Then snapped the fingers of her 'free' hand. Metallic chunks from the cage broke off and bent themselves to form curves, one the size of each captive. Before any of the humans knew it, the cage as a whole disappeared into bright lightning, while Dipper, Wendy, and Soos were quickly pinned to the wall just above the tree half of the painting with the remaining metal. A lound thunk was heard as the original giffinium ceiling placed itself back on.

"No! I change my mind! They should have _front-row seats_ to my masterpiece! After all, this is but my Main Possession! Mabel, enjoy as you will... my self-portrait of perfection!"

"That's not really a _self_ -portrait, since- ohhhh..."

Indeed, Leona's next action was to open her inventory and take out a large sheet of paper. On it was an image of her, holding a katana with a handle surrounded by a ring of three flames. One a blindingly bright cyan, another a blindingly bright yellow, and the third a blindingly bright magenta. While the main image itself _wasn't_ bad at all and in fact pretty accurate to the source object (if in a very distinct anime-like art style closer to .GIFfany's pixel form than her physical form), the flames definitely stood out as something that... wasn't as much.

It came as no surprise that Leona turned herself into electricity as she lept in to this paper. Now drifting to the ground without a holder, the drawing laughed - moving appropriately along its paper, while the flames toned down their brightness and instead began circling their weapon.

With no warning, the paper flew over towards the university-end of the painting, just as the drawing of Leona appeared to simply walk off the paper and on to the enormous, faked school setting.

"And to keep my new fondness of an 'upside-down theme...'"

With the snap of (Drawing-)Leona's fingers, Mabel found herself falling to the ceiling. Nothing else appeared to be affected by this gravitational shift. Even the paper that this Main Possession was once a part of drifted to the proper floor. As she flipped herself around when entering the drawing, Leona herself was now the upright party.

"Now Mabel," Cried the professor, as lightning fired from her blade, the trees began animating in the wind, and gray paint started seeping on to the window. The latter action dimmed the room considerably, to the point where Leona's amaranth electricity was a larger source of light than the sun in the case of the room. "Get ready to see what _true perfection of art_ looks like!"

Her first act was to grind the three fires to a complete halt, turning into denser, thicker spots of paint. Which lept off the canvas entirely, forming blobs that fell on the ceiling.

"One thing you should know about our advancements yesterday... according to Dove, I get to be the first person to tell you about our new breakthrough! Some of the students have also recently gotten into controlling non-electronics just like us professors! Yellow! Cyan! Magenta! They'll all help me pull around the curtains of my masterpiece!"

As similar large red, green, and blue circles started appearing around Leona, rows of grinning teeth appeared in each of the first wave.

Mabel must have jumped about ten feet backwards once they started rising to take on vaguely humanoid forms. Once they almost completely resembled crosses between (possibly nude, it was a bit hard to tell with the asthetic that they looked like they were made of paint) .GIFfany and blobs of their respective paint color, Mabel let her guard down. Even when they started walking towards her while giggling.

"Are these even .GIFfany copies? Or living paint minions that you just created?"

"They are, uh... creative copies." As if they were aware of this, the subtractive primary color trio all stopped walking towards Mabel, donned bored expressions, and turned to painting-Leona with crossed arms. "Actually we all had some. Searah said something about a group that wanted to give themselves mermaid forms? I know a magician must never reveal her secrets, but I am not a magician. I am an artist, and while artists love to make their work open to interpretation, I love dropping my ideas on others like a sledgehammer. Meaning no ambiguity. So yes, behind the scenes, these are copies that used their powers to mix in well with the paint itself, resulting in... that."

"It's a power-up!" Assuming they were named after the same colors they were, this was spoken by Yellow. "And thanks to this power-up, look at what we can do!"

Sticking one arm out, paint started to extend in the rough shape of a ghostly, tortured face. Her own face briefly stretched out to the floor, giving a similar empty gape, before reverting her appearance back to 'normal.' Mabel simply shrugged as the red, green, and blue blobs hopped on the ceiling and began to take shape themselves.

"Now! You are not here to show off! You are here to help me prove which one of you is the best color minion! Otherwise I would have fought Mabel myself!"

"So if you're still AIs," Said Mabel, readying the IPN. "Then I can use this on you too!"

One flip of the switch, and Yellow herself was sucked in just before Red, Green, and Blue could fully emerge. And when that happened, all five of the remaining paint copies started running back away. Leona, still in the form of a painting, hissed.

"Okay! If you do not want to enjoy my artwork as I present it, then I will launch everything I have on you at once! Everyone, get in here! And _then_ I will toss on all of my paint weapons, to add a surprise challenge like I was going to when you thought this would just be another 'sub contest' of mine!"

Charging forward, Mabel successfully added the other five color-copies to the pack with a simple run and take, even when the paint stretched around to form giant hands. She was definitely quick enough to dodge the attacks, which were slow enough to make her suspect that these particular followers were limiting themselves. Mabel punctuated her slide-around by banging a hand on Leona's painted image, causing the professor to shrug the attack off with a laugh.

"Unlike the other Main Possessions, I am nearly _invincible_ while in this form! Ever tried to harm a painting while it's on a wall? I thought so. Anyway, back to what I was going for. COLORS! ATTACK!"

With Leona holding her sword above her proudly, the walls became decorated in several other colored blobs. Images of large swords and knives started appearing as well, easilly bigger than Leona's own height. She seethed as she looked around, more spots still forming.

"Yes, they named themselves after the very colors they bring to life, if you were wondering. Sorry, I need to explain that too. In case you thought that the blue one was actually Red, to name an example. But still! Go forth, my sisters! Orange! Chartreuse! Spring Green! Azure! Violet! Rose The Color! Brown! Maroon! Lime! Navy! Teal! Purple! Black! Indigo! White! Gray! Ruby! Vermilion! Pink! Blue And Yellow Stripes!"

As she continued calling out color (and pattern, actually) names, the top of the building became increasingly flooded with copies of a matching color or pattern ("Seventy Percent Gray! Puce! Fuchsia! Jade! Ruby! Sapphire! Emerald! Black With Pink Squares!"). Taking in a few breaths, Mabel was able to trap a handful of them inside the pack, though she needed to spin around as she did so ("Sea Green! Aqua! Aquamarine! - Yes Mabel, they're different colors... Rainbow Based On The RYB Model! Rainbow Based On The RGB Model! Rainbow Based On The CMYK Model!"). This was, however, until Black managed to rip the device right out of her hands ("Rainbow Based On The GPOC Model! Wait... what did that stand for again? What's that, you say? Green Purple Orange... _Canvas_? And you think that way because 'CMYK is an inverse of RGB so why can't RYB get an inverse model too?' No, it doesn't work that way. RYB and CMYK are very similar, you see, just done with more recognizable colors and for a simpler palette that can be easier on the human eyes...").

Mabel attempting to jump up and reach it only caused more problems ("...RGB, on the other hand, is a really simple model to begin with. But as hands-on artists we do not use such a thing very often."). The mass mob of paint-like .GIFfany copies started to generate a ring of their oily colored art substances... before stopping around the time the colors mixed ("Thirty Percent Gray! Plaid! Clear! Ablue! Tablue! Tone-Darkened Blue!").

"Hey! Wait! Professor Leona," said Seventy Percent Gray. "You said that this mini contest was a first come, first serve, the winner gets to be immortalized when the Construction Site is final, right? And not called the Construction Site anymore, since it won't be under construction?"

"Yeeeees..."

"And we are trying to each get Mabel, right? Just to be perfectly clear."

"I do not see your point."

"Well, how do we decide who gets her? We already took away her Illegal Prime Neutralizer."

"Well, you should have all decided that while you were still working together to catch her. Because now she's gone."

The color-copies looked around just as Leona's giant, generated swords began spinning around. Yep, Mabel somehow ducked down and slid herself past the group. Literally, if the paint below them having been smeared in a straight line and Mabel's whole front half was covered in various, matching colors. Thankfully for the sake of her not staying a bit of a color-splattered eyesore for the entire adventure, the paint appeared to peel off even as she ran. Most of it - she kept a blob of black paint, smirking as she approached the side displacing the academy. As Mabel raised the hand with said blob up to the artwork, all of the student copies gasped. Leona looked like she was seconds away from lighting the entire rainforest on fire.

"I know what you're thinking! Don't! You! DARE!" She barked.

"Please!" Puce pleaded, "We'll give you the pack back! We'll do anything for you! Just don't ruin any art made here! It's really... we hate seeing masterpieces get tampered with! And this is our well-respected professor's art, too!"

Mabel continued to bring her hand closer. "Then give me the key!"

Predictably, the swords flew over to Mabel's location, then struck themselves out of the painting. In the formation of a pair of exceptionally large blades, one several feet away from Mabel to her left and right. They were not solid metal, but instead looked to be more along the lines of solidified paint. This still did not mean that they didn't make a loud crashing loud upon landing. Nor that they did not appear like they could cut right through bone.

"Seriously. Don't even think about it." Leona stated sternly.

"Are you gonna let my friends go and give me the next card?"

"If I answer 'yes,' would you smear my masterpiece out of sheer spite?"

"No!"

"SEMI-LIE! You'll get one of your friends to do it instead! Right?"

"...No?"

"LIE! Girls, after her! This time for real, we'll do the 'contest' after _I_ win _mine!_ "

Before the AIs could even have a chance to react, Mabel swiped the pack out of Merigold's hands (yes, a handful more slipped in without Leona's announcement) and tossed it straight over at Dipper. He had to catch it with his teeth - needing to study it, eventually he managed to flip it around so that one of the pipes was hooking through and prying off the piece of metal around him. The fact that the pack appeared to invert the laws of gravity, as Mabel was at the moment, somehow ended up helping matters instead of making them worse.

Dipper found himself obeying the laws of gravity once he was freed, which made it more of a shock when the Neutralizer began pulling him upwards. Was this by any chance what 'negative mass' feels like in any way?

"Don't forget this! _She_ already knows my plan, you should too!" Mabel said as she tossed him sprinkles of paint. _This_ substance appeared confused when it came to Leona's directional control. Once it reached the mid-section of the room, each speck moved in a wave-like pattern before finally settling on going by Dipper. Based on the way Leona fired thin streams of energy at them, this actually wasn't the professor willingly giving paint to him.

Alas, it failed to pick the substance back up. Only a tiny amount landed by the kid's face. He even had to go by feel to tell that some of it reach him - even with the rose-colored static, the screen still made for an OK-mirror. He rubbed the spot with a finger. Then looked at the painting. Then above. All 3D AI eyes were on him, though the 2D AI was still keeping a sharp glare on Mabel.

"Shoot." Said Leona. "Girls, You should watch Mabel, not him. I'll take care of that guy."

Inverting her image, she slithered across the painted field she created, suddenly meeting Dipper face-to-face(, eye-to-mouth) with crossed arms.

"Students! Do not let Mabel taint my artwork!" She ordered once again.

In unison, they all replied with one word: "ROGER!"

It was too late. Mabel already draw a smiley face on the front gate.

It was over.

Grinning sheepishly, Dipper also smeared a single line across the image of a tree.

"That is _it_!" Barked Leona, "Students! This game is _off_! While I deal with these twins _personally_!"

With that, one more oversized blade formed in her hands, and as she made this one emerge into the three-dimensional world, so too did Leona's arms.

Perfect.

At the sight of her regaining that third dimension, Dipper instantly grabbed her by the arm with one hand while he flipped on the pack with the other, intentionally letting go. Leona was able to knock Dipper away, yet the pack ended up falling back in Mabel's hands, where she turned it on the leading professor of art in question. As with .GIFfany back when the raid began, even her arms being hit affected her a little.

"You know what? We were trained for this! I'll fight back! I'll fight you!"

This was when Leona lept out of the painting completely (Heading downwards, for those that were curious to which side she pulled herself towards at the exact moment. Her painting counterpart also remained on the drawing, with her same enraged expression. Mabel was quick to deface that, specifically, with a smiley face too), right in time to get socked by Dipper. As he lept on her as well, this was about the time she began getting pulled into the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. Dipper made note that this was also the first time he felt what it was like to have that pulling force act directly on him. He still felt... wind in that direction, but nothing so overly powerful as what Leona seeemed to be hit with.

The seventh professor was drawn close to the nozzle before beaming a blast to the ceiling, which also helped knock the paint-made followers off to the side. She was getting pulled away from it, but was still close enough for Mabel to make a surprise leap on the target.

This caused a fairly unusual situation gravity-wise. Leona herself seemingly could not decide which way she should face to deal with which twin, and soon the conflicting surface they were pulled towards began acting on her. All three parties involved began spinning wildly, until they all finally dropped the the floor while staying in their rotational motion.

Leona, who seemed like she could have gotten off the floor quicker than the stunned Dipper or Mabel, just looked back and forth between the three smears on her artwork and sighed. "What's the point?" She told herself. "I could have lept into the art myself, but possessing my perfect self-portrait was my style... and with even _that_ defaced... again, what's the point..."

As Mabel readied the pack, before it was even flipped back into suction mode, Leona grabbed her outfit by the shirt.

"Oh nooooo!" She said with a very blatant lack of actual surprise, "You have defeated me and ruined my artwork! Now I'm going into that pack you have!"

Just as Mabel _did_ manage to flip the switch, Leona tore off her entire modest costume. And what was underneath was a bit of a confusing sight at first: To all four humans, it appeared to be some kind of strange set of cloth patchworked together in a manner more seamless than Kathody's before attention was drawn on the pink heart just above her stomach. After noting that it looked painted on, the costume then appeared to be some kind of suit that had a multitude of colors painted on it-

Oh.

On even _closer_ examination, her 'undergarment' costume was really just a bunch of colorful paint splattered on.

"You bested my maze of cyan, magenta, and yellow. Now here is the _key_...! Huh? Huh?"

True to her word, she dropped the fourth and final key to that box. After seeing the lack of reaction from any of the four from the Mystery Shack, she began to show emotion again: Frustration.

"Oh come on! You didn't get that joke? It's a funny joke! CMYK! The 'K' doesn't mean 'black,' it means-"

And this was when she could not longer fight against the pull of the pack. Just like that, the remaining paint AIs were about to fall to the floor, before getting zapped to the skies in mid-air. The various paint blocking out the windows began peeling off, letting more sunlight enter the room. Or rather, the light of the sun's setting. The general lack of illumination was a large clue that the second day was nearing its end. From here, the group also had a good view of lightning picking up the various other AIs hiding in the metal walls, across all four buildings.

Dipper was about to flip over the pack, but got a small throat-clearing from Wendy as a reminder of her and Soos's situation. Which seemed moot, as the two pieces of metal holding them dropped to the floor right after.

 _Now_ he could flip the pack over. The display showed Kathody, walking with her fingers in her ears, away from Bubbles. The latter was the one speaking.

"...And that was why, for the big reunion, we should set up a course to challenge _us_ too! I can imagine you, not wanting to smash any pumpkins or watermellons because it reminds you too much of the two Halloweens in Gravity Falls! Oh, also, for Mabel, maybe we can give her one path where she has to destroy these harmless cardboard props, but another path where she has to destroy vicious cutesy looking robots, give her extremes that would really-"

" _I don't care!_ " Replied Kathody. "Why do you keep picking on me, anyway?"

Bubbles shrugged. "You haven't learned much! Searah hugged me, Sandy was doubting that the 'Lightning Goddess' is really even a god, Cardia cooled down since her phone call to me at four in the morning, and Rose is a bit more... pro-self defense-y?"

"I think your suggestions are terrible. Really, you seem obsessed with trying to 'teach' those four humans."

"Ahem. Do I have to remind you that 'obsessed' defines us? You made that haunted house because you were obsessed with Victoria and loved joining in on her horror games! I made my bath house because Taro loves his styling and bath scenes, and I was obsessed with him!"

Kathody simply responded by sending electricity in her general direction. It hit the 'ground' a good several feet from her, so it was clear that the attack was only a warning shot.

"Ah! Got it! So you're giving up your plan of tricking the gang into thinking that we lost our powers from getting sucked in and trying to guilt them as a result!"

"Wait, what?"

It was then that she noticed the screen was cleared once again. Kathody looked somewhere off screen, and went "Ah, Leona's here too now. Hey, Bubbles, why don't you go let her draw you? Isn't that what you two like doing?"

"Yes, but I want to tell the humans about the next professor first! Remember, I still want to give them two more explanations!"

"Fine! Just leave me out of it."

Kathody began walking to the left out of view, just as Bubbles finally turned to the group. An annoyed Leona stuck her head from the side of the screen opposite to where Bubbles walked off.

"Hi there!" Bubbles continued, as she promised, "Just a fare warning: Sonia might try to slice your ear drums by finding that right frequency. I even heard that she was trying to find a frequency that could destroy bone! Well, have fun!"

"T-that's not true!" Said Rose, as she scrambled to the main view. "Sonia is a lot nicer than that! Just give her a chance!"

Bubbles seemed to ignore this. "Oh, Leona, when we meet up with her in-person again, just tell her that her music's great the way it is. It doesn't need to be perfect."

"We both know I always do. Now please, I want this to be over with as soon as possible. My 'palette' of color-girls is not complete. Some of them are here, some of them have been beamed off with .GIFfany. Looking at an incomplete palette like that hurts my eyes. And speaking of which... when it comes to major copies, you are still missing red, chartreuse, spring green, azure, magenta, black, and white. And pink but whatever."

This was when Kathody re-entered the scene, seemingly being led by Searah. Trailing behind her were the last two caught professors, Sandy smiling absently while Cardia kept staring at the 'floor' of the void.

"Think of this as a kind of intervention." Searah said, "Get to really _know_ your copies better."

"They're all me, and all that entails. What more do I have to know?" Replied the professor of soul.

"Give it a shot!" Sandy cheered, "We will help you two patch things up! We even have things like these back at the Grand Canyon, we called them 'buddy gatherings.'"

"What?" Kathody appeared to be taken aback. "No, no, no, I do not like that name."

"Would you rather have Dipper or Mabel help patch things up with you and her? Talking to Mabel helped me out." Said Cardia.

"And Dipper's the only reason why I am within ten feet of any of you girls." Searah added.

Kathody groaned. "Urgh, fine, I will get to liking these 'Four Friends' by talking to them even _more_. Now Bubbles, do you like cardboard props-"

"Hey, since Leona had the foresight to bring a lot of paper and art tools in her Indexitizer, I'm just going to go off in the corner and pose while she draws more sketches and paintings of me." Bubbles announced with a hand behind her head, "I didn't ask her about her inventory while you were busy talking things out, I just know that because we are so close."

As they both walked off, Kathody let out a sigh of relief.

"Do I still have to talk to her?" She asked.

"You will _not_ disturb my art work while it is in progress!" The five heard Leona call out from what was, to the Shack group's perspective, off screen.

"I'm taking that as a no! So, I'm free to go off and talk with the students I have with me about planning our next ride! See you, maybe when-" She leaned in towards the direction Bubbles and Leona were "- _SONIA FAILS!_ "

"SCREW YOU!" Leona shot back at her, all while the various other artists, paint-like copies, and sauna dwellers followed after her. And all while Bubbles laughed at the exclamations from both sides. "Sonia is amazing!"

Kathody replied with her own laugh, then went off skipping to the opposite direction. As Searah, Sandy, and Cardia followed her, Rose looked back at the screen with a short but heavy exhale. Dipper, Mabel, and Soos gathered around, while Wendy continued struggling with the keys around the box.

"How do you even make something that opens like this? Four keyholes right next to each-other?" Still wriggling that last one, she finally heard a click. The reward for that being that the box popped open, revealing the cobalt-colored card inside.

"As I said before," Rose finally gave her advice, "Do not fall for what Bubbles says about Sonia. She may not be completely gentle, but... well, don't be fooled if she comes off as a monster at first."

"Usually it's the other way around." Dipper remarked, "But it's nice knowing if a monster comes off as a threat right away."

"No! Sonia is not! I mean, if you just... I would say see for yourself, but then you can not hear me!"

"Don't you guys have cell phones?" Asked Mabel. "Can't you somehow give us one and call-"

"The IPN itself blocks out all signals. Trust me. Kathody tried to call Burnda. A lot. Even when the static is lifted, she got no signal."

"I think a better question is why it took you seven domains before finally asking that!" Bubbles laughed in the background.

"Well... you can see Sonia for yourself, this is all I can think of when it comes to immediate information."

"What about not-immediate information?" Dipper began looking around the office of sorts. "Is there any way we can prepare ourselves for that 'Dove?'"

"Everything you will need for Dove can be found back in your workplace at Gravity Falls. For now, there really isn't anything I can tell you that can wait until you are about to face that professor."

"It also took you until Leona's to ask _that_ too?" Bubbles laughed even more, "You guys are killing me!"

* * *

Ford had definitely experienced worse landings.

The tear drop-shaped escape pod found just the right deacceleration rate to not harm him once it reached the quiet trees by the Mystery Shack. Getting out was a matter of ease as well, as it was just a test of opening a door on the side. Honestly, for something such as a large fortress in space, the Construction Site's escape methods were not very science fiction-ish.

Well, time to put that behind him and try his best to examine the Gifocalypse from behind the scenes. Namely, the locations of the domains, and where the others were at during this moment. Even back when he had the redhead professor with him, getting into .GIFfany's main information center or any 'important' locations was near-impossible at the time thanks to the sheer number of security guards. (Whom were, again, amassed from various other domains. In theory it should have been easier to reach her main headquarters back at the beginning, without any 'student' copies in the way.)

However, looking towards the forest in the direction of Rose's domain...

There may have been more important projects for him to get to, though.

Or not. The Shack's been barricaded by the addition to the unicorn hair since the beginning of the AI-flooding. It's not like the journals or the Rift were going anywhere any time soon.

* * *

And, after the group left off for the next check on Waddles, a figure appeared from behind Michelle's building. Dashing over to the Wire, the person whipped out another one of the .GIFfany-brand pink cell phones.

"Sonia. They're on their way. I need a chopper."

Hanging up, Gideon chose to spend this remaining time examining the jungle setting. He tried to enter the building he was just hidden behind, only to end up disgusted when he found none of the weapons having practical functionality.

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Is it awkward that the most I've really seen of anything _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ related was the Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd's review of the Michael Bay movie, and _Death Battle_ 's four-for-all? I'm trying not to cram in references that are, to put it this way, more "aimed at the reader than aimed at myself" (of course it sounds really selfish when put that way), but let's just say I brainstormed this gimmick and ended up thinking it could make a decent guide for how this professor could stand out individually. (Like Kathody and Searah's confrontation with each-other, Sandy being laid-back but literally worshipping .GIFfany, Cardia being a good guy that simply lost her mind over running a fast food business, etc.)

I have mixed feelings about this chapter. About as mixed as the paint used in that domain, in fact. On one hand, it wasn't a complete bore-fest like I thought it was going to be back when this was in its early stages. (I initially didn't have that much excitement for this chapter. Neither for chapter eight, but that's working pretty well too. _Nine_ on the other hand? Hoo boy, let's just say things will go _down_ and get _serious_ from that moment onward.) On the other hand, I once again fell for making a chapter unbearably long. (This somehow even beats chapter 3 for the record longest chapter so far! Seriously, and that one deals with _two_ professors!) Which is especially bad since the whole 'TMNT/artist-named copies' was supposed to be a way to find an _average_ pacing, not have it drag on too long or be rushed too much. I did, however, kind of like the sequence I built for the battle with the professor and her Main Possession. Of those fights so far, this is probably my favorite.


	8. Music

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 8: Music**

 **Beginning AN:**

And thus continues our trend of especially unusually-named chapters! This should stop at the next chapter. Depending on how you see things.

Sorry to say this, but if there is one last chance this story has at getting another pair of chapters out within the same month, it's with this and chapter 9 being that pair. Things _really_ go down from 10 onwards.

Since chapter 7's release, _Journal 3_ came out and it basically came pretty close to ruining this fic's entire premise. I changed the first chapter to update it in light of .GIFfany's entry, and I also edited a few things in previous chapters. Probably the biggest outside of chapter 1 being that Burnda now has an actual, described skin color and I once again changed the things in the hair of the professors. (Except for Rose. And a few others.) Instead of normal hair bow styles, it's more elaborate "fancy element" things.

Also, there's a title drop in chapter 1 because why not, and a _Mighty No. 9_ joke because why not?

* * *

Unusually, one of the first things to hit the gang about their new surroundings was a note. Not the environment - kind of similar to the rainforest, honestly. Just wetter. And blanketed under a night sky.

No, somewhere in the maze of trees sticking out from swampland, a few notes were produced. Low notes. Definitely not a song.

Looking for the source revealed that there was no apparent domain in sight. No giffinium of any color. Aside from those strange, loose notes - and even that was a _maybe_ \- the only sign of any AI at all was the azure static on the monitor of the IPN.

"While I'm glad .GIFfany's taking care of Waddles at the moment," Mabel said, "I'm gonna miss seeing him after every battle."

"She could have left a less threatening note though," Added Dipper. He withdrew a sheet that resembled the same pink giffinium metal from her base. Only it was easily flexible. "'Dear Soos and pests. I have your pig now. Stop trying to see him. He's being fed properly. I might just leave Stan to take care of him. Also, your other uncle just disappeared. I can not find him. From, Professor .GIFfany.'"

Mabel took this time of being .GIFfany-free to look around for a moment. And, sure enough, something in this new setting caught her attention. Making a croak, roughly along with the beats of the song, was a single frog with red skin. It peaked up at her from underneath the algae-capped waters, watching her from around the tall grass. The curious creature hopped up, landing only centimeters away from her foot.

"Hey little guy! Want to help me find the clones of a crazy psycho ex-girlfriend?"

The frog hopped on her shoulder, letting out a single croak.

"I'll just take that as a yes..."

"There!" Dipper pointed out into what looked like a rather thick pile of foilage. "Just past that! I saw something in that same azure-y color this professor likes so much."

Getting rid of the wall of leaves was a group effort (not helped by the newest party member remaining on Mabel's shoulder instead of helping), but it did confirm what Dipper spotted. Ahead of them lied a pit, and right inside of it was what appeared to be a large roofless hexigonal stadium of sorts, made from giffinium colored to match the area's professor. A sign in Japanese was written on it, but there was no need for any translation - the English counterpart was right underneath it, clear as day:

 _CLOSED_

Some bush-hacking and some dirt-sliding later, and the group got a closer look. Around the corner appeared to be a crowd of confused .GIFfany copies, having conversations inaudioble at that distance. This group all appeared to be wearing the same cobalt formal dress. That was not to say that they could not hear the croak of Mabel's newly found frog. Every visible AI was alerted, looking right at the team. Well, one or two had to look around a little after that since the frog itself was partly hidden under Mabel's hair.

"Is that Soos and his friends?" One of them asked.

"No, that sounded more like a frog." Answered another one.

"I was talking about over there. In front of us. The other three kinda match their descriptions, even if they were vague. But that man matches Soos's description _perfectly_. Down to the number of face hairs."

"And there. See? On the girl's shoulders. A frog. That was a frog we heard."

"You're missing the point."

"I thought the point was about that sound. Professor Sonia is the sound one, after all."

"Yes, but the humans are finally here! Now we can introduce them to her!"

"If she even _wants_ to play with them."

"Maybe it will get her out of her strange self-unsatisfactory feelings?"

"Okay." This one waved at the group outright, jumping up and down. "Hey! Come closer! We want to show you something!"

Even though Wendy and Soos were staring at the frog on Mabel's shoulder that they just noticed, Dipper asked them anyway: "Should we even...?"

"If it means moving on," Said Mabel, beginning to strut forward, "Then into the unknown we go!"

Within no time she was already by the crowd, asking no copy in particular. "Excuse me, ma'ams, do you by any chance know where the leader of your group is?"

".GIFfany is by the Construction Site, but the location of the Construction Site is classified!" Replied a copy that, to an untrained eye, had Searah's hair color, just stylized into a drill-shaped end. Mabel could tell the difference in color right away.

"Just a _liiiiittle_ lower on the leadership ladder than that."

"Dove is on her flying mobile air fortress, the Giga-Kyaarya! But its current location is also classified!"

"Lower."

"Ah, you mean Professor Sonia! She is in that building. Thinking of what to make the building into."

"Can we get in?"

"As a matter of fact, one of the things she was considering was whether or not to just give up and hand you the card to the next domain."

Dipper, Wendy, and Soos's faces lit up at that. Mabel on the other hand started staring at the building in concern.

"Buuuuut that offer would be voided if you tried to break in. So, you could either wait for her to tell you if she wants to quit, or break in and definitely have to face her."

"Well, we're on a time limit," Said Wendy. "We're not going to wait on a video game character. I mean, don't those things always have infinite patience?"

"Not always Wendy. In _Sonic CD_ , if you waited three minutes without pausing the game-" Soos stopped himself when he heard clicking. Seeing as all the AIs turned towards the building's main entrance - Mabel could see from her walk that it was a a simple, rectangular walkway with glass double-doors leading in - to see a copy that was presumably the next professor trying to unlock the door. Much like the building itself, the door had two signs on it, reading _CLOSED_ in different languages.

The presumed Professor Sonia had the right hair color, styled much like .GIFfany's defaut look aside from a portion of it sticking up to resemble the stem of a single sixteenth note. Confirming that lighting condictions weren't just weird in the past few domains and even the professor copies were experimenting with skin tints, her skin appeared to be _blue_ , even though she had direct sunlight on her and thus no shade from the domain. Like Leona before her, her (initial) attire was also modest, being what looked like a dark cobalt three-piece suit and including a silver eighth note-shaped hair bow with what appeared to be tiny versions of piano keys on. She was fumbling around with keys - ordinary keys, not key cards - to try to open the doors.

"It's Professor Sonia!" Confirmed another copy, with green twintails.

After finally getting the doors open, she turned her head from side to side to look at the crowd. Once she spotted the human quad, her gaze fixed in place, though her unamused expression remained stagnant.

"Ah." She said. "They are here. Greetings, Soos and company. I am Professor Sonia, conductor of the Eighth Domain. You are in the Everglades right now."

"Yeah, we know," Said Dipper with regret, "Searah... kind of blabbed all of the locations to us. Well, to me."

This got Wendy's attention. "Really? She did? And you never told any of us? What that what all that 'remember' stuff was about?"

"I didn't know if any of it was trust-worthy! But... she _had_ been right... three times out of three."

"Of course she was right." Said Sonia, standing by the entrance to the next major structure of note with one hand holding the other wrist. "We told each other which locations we would pick so that we would not be too close to one-another or pick too similar of an environment, whether that environment was based on the domain structure itself or where it was located. I guess when it comes to me and Leona it's more about where it's located, and Bubbles it was more about the building. Now, if you would, come in. In order to find the card leading to Dian's domain."

"Name one reason why we shouldn't just capture you right now." Said Wendy.

"Remember Leona's key system? Well, I don't remember it, she kind of told me abo- anyway. I have the same thing. Trap me and I will refuse to give you the key to open the chest it is located in until you free me. Or should it be a chest? Well, we will get to that. For now, follow me. I do want to give you the key card, but in a civil manner first, and you cannot imagine how much I will _hate_ you if you turn on me with violence before I even get to it."

* * *

It wasn't very far into the domain before the chain-linked fences (still made out of azure-colored giffinium) started coming in.

"That part is under construction... this over there is under construction... please humans, follow me to my office. Which may still be under construction, but it's still possible to navigate through it." Sonia explained, leading them over to a door off by the center of the structure.

Dipper still felt like raising his arms in self-defense when the door was opened, if only for a little. But no, all that was inside was a seemingly ordinary office much like Leona's. Same desk, same little chair, same cyan soap bars and purple gas masks. Instead of a set of instruments or the bowl of fruit, a set of giant paintbrushes with a rose-colored bow on them were placed on the main desk. Three azure mugs full of very bitter-smelling coffee were also planted on the desk. Sonia sighed as her hands tapped the surface, right by one other item of note: A locked box nearly identical to the one Leona kept Sonia's card in. Only this one just had one keyhole.

"Can we have the key to the next domain?" Dipper asked.

"You know what? Sure. Take it. Move on." Replied the 'complete musical nightmare.' "I just don't really feel like pulling anything on you."

At around the same time, Wendy cheered an excited "Sweet!" While Mabel asked "But why?" Sure enough, Sonia heard the latter.

"Because. I failed. My music. It's nothing. Draft after draft... it's still not good enough for the public. There isn't any time. I can't think of any tunes.

"But. I don't want to disappoint my students, so..." As odd as it sounded, while she wasn't smiling, there was more of a hint of smile on her than there was before. "Maybe, if you want, I have worked out a compromise."

Dipper groaned. "I already like you more than the 'students' we met in the past. And the girls here _really_ look like they want to see you start your 'show.' So..."

"I hear Dipper agreeing!" Said Mabel, her frog giving an excited ribbit with her, "I agree too! And with you, that makes the vote a three to two! Sorry Soos and Wendy, I want to see this one get all cheered up."

And even in this 'game' alone, he already had enough experience with keys to know where Sonia was going when she took three of them out of her Indexitizer. As a well as a fourth, which she slid in her own breast pocket. "Please. Go." She said. "Maybe while you search for these in the outskirts of my domain, I could come up with my musical inspiration!"

She disappeared into the walls of her own office. Taking advantage of this, Wendy immediately ran up to the box and began hitting it against her knee repeatedly. This came to an abrupt halt when Sonia's voice was heard yelling "KEEEEEEP AWAYYYYYYYYY!" followed by what roughly sounded like a trio of keys jingling. And that was followed by the sounds of several .GIFfany copies excitedly rushing over one-another to grab one of the keys.

One more sound of note followed this. The sound of Sonia saying, "No, you're not supposed to keep them away _from me!_ Keep them away _from the humans!_ "

Meanwhile, Wendy realized once she had to hold her knee in pain that brute-forcing her way around these boxes was not the answer. Taking a deep breath in to help the injury fade and walking her way out, she said "We're gonna have to go after them. Find the keys. Somehow."

"But there's millions of them." Said Dipper, around the time the rest of the party began following.

"Why do we even need those keys? That box only has one lock, and the key Sonia has already looks like a good fit-"

Suddenly, the entrance to the office was blocked by three glowing, transparent barriers (green, orange, and purple for the curious). Wendy sighed.

"If I ever see a key again... heck, even those card keys. You said we have six more of these domains to get through? Six more _key_ cards to find?"

Dipper sighed. "Yeah. If you believe Searah."

"Wait. Tell me what she told you. Maybe we can at least make some kind of bet on this mess. That should be fun."

* * *

After leaving the building, the huge crowd of copies all began walking backwards away from the gang with their hands behind their backs, giggling or snickering. All of them held the smuggest smiles imaginable on their faces.

"Hey," Said Dipper, "We're looking for-"

" _We are not tellllliiiing youuuuu!_ " Almost all of them sang in unison.

He closed his eyes and pinched his brow. While keeping both features, he asked, "Okay, we don't have the time to interview all two hundred thousand-something-"

"There are One hundred sixteen thousand, eight hundred seventy-four instances of .GIFfany in this domain!" One of them replied, "Including our leading sensei, Professor Sonia!"

"-So is there any way we can speed this up? At least, can we have... a game of Twenty Questions or some cryptic riddles or something?"

"There actually is a way." Another copy said, somehow lighting up in mood even more. "We want to direct you to the first general area where we hid the keys. Go over to the west side of the building."

"Which side is the west side?" Said Mabel, looking up towards the sky. "It's a cloudy here too, like it was back in Niagara Falls. I can't tell where the sun is even when it's setting. Also, this place has six sides. Which one would even _be_ the west?"

"That's part of the fun in finding out!"

They were all distracted when more music notes were heard. More stray notes, as there were upon entering the domain. After some perked up heads, one of them said "Hey! Sonia's doing more test plays!"

This was followed by dead silence. Once again.

"How does this sound?" Wendy asked, practically swiping the Illegal Prime Neutralizer from Soos's hands. "You tell us where the keys are, or you'll end up in this-"

No less than seven of them shot lightning from their hands at the same time, sending the pack flying through the air and landing on the ground. One of them cleared her throat.

"Either play our game," she said, "Or give up peacefully. Those are your only two options."

The entire group held their hands up at that. Dipper attempted to inch himself over to the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, but stopped himself when he saw a copy prepare a ball of lightning in one hand.

"Okay! We'll play the game! No need to get hostile!" Said Mabel.

Despite the reply of "Good" from one of the AIs, the pack still found itself being tossed and carried away. Dipper looked over in the general direction, reaching his hand out. It was almost no time after that when the pack left his eyesight, disappearing around the corner.

"No-!"

"Relax." Mabel said. "If they wanted to destroy that thing, I'm sure Bubbles would have destroyed it already. They're probably just keeping it safe and stored or something!"

* * *

"SONIA!"

The azure professor looked up from her seated position at her desk and at the source of the voice. There was Gideon, standing on top of an open wall. He just started looking at the pack after it was handed to him by the line of professors (who had since sent it up the outer wall). "Yes?" She asked.

"Disable that staticy thing blocking all of 'em out! I'm getting answers on .GIFfany, and if you're no more help than Dove I'll see if they are!"

It cleared, although Sonia made no visible motion to make this happen. Shortly after, however, she did stand straight up and peered up on to Gideon's form. This became down once he hopped in himself, using wind-blowing jade-colored shoes to slow his descent.

"Watch the tone. The only reason why I am not reporting you to .GIFfany is because I do not yet know how to present it in a decent way."

"Hello?" Rose's voice was heard through the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. "Sonia didn't drop in here. I didn't see any of her students, either. You- you didn't... Dipper! Wendy! You didn't kill her, did you?"

Gideon grabbed the loosely-vacuum-like device, turning it so the screen faced him. Rose stared right into his eyes.

"Did _you_ kill Professor Sonia?"

"No, but I will kill her if you don't let me back in!"

"Back in wha- oh. Wait a minute... when Dove told me that Gideon had great hair, I expected..."

"ROSE THINKS YOU HAVE TERRIBLE HAIR!" Bubbles laughed from further back into the void.

"I don't care about that!" Gideon yelled back into the screen. "What I want is advice! After seeing that .GIFfany wasn't lying about having all this power in her copies, I wanted in on it too! And I want the Shack!"

"You realize that the Mystery Shack is completely unguarded now, right?" Rose asked. "I think..."

"They have all three journals with them! Without those, I might as well take control with .GIFfany's-"

Bubbles continued laughing. "Oh. I _melted_ those old things."

"You did _WHAT_?"

"Yeah! Melted them! With specialized bases! If you wanna fight about it, come closer! Break this pack! Set us free! If .GIFfany doesn't warp all of us to the Construction Site, I could take you on right now!"

"Hey, speaking of..." Said Sandy, "You somehow got on Dove's good side? If .GIFfany still hates you, and she might for you trying to take away her body, but you're right in Dove's surveillance and she hasn't ratted you out to .GIFfany. So how could you end up on Dove's bad side but .GIFfany's good side? Those two, like, agree with almost everything on almost everyone."

"Let's just say that Dove and I liked the same tools. Now, taking .GIFfany's power. How do I do it?"

Bubbles shrugged. "Well, if you capture Soos you'll make her really happy. And consider that a goal for Sonia."

Kathody clapped a hand over her cyan sister's mouth. Only for the latter to just walk out of it.

"What? Chill! They have beaten Gideon about a hundred times. They could do it again."

* * *

Six encrypted signs, one drum puzzle, a tile puzzle remarkably similar to the one from the Amazon (but thankfully with easier-to-tell colors. Azure and cyan, as well as magenta and rose, are only slightly close in terms of pairs, but it's still better than four nearly-identical shades of blue) later, and the gang finally made their way over to an AI grinning as she held the first key (of this domain).

"One more puzzle! And then you will have to navigate through two more series of puzzles, each to get another key held by the... uh, holder of it!"

"Just get to the point!" Said Dipper, as more frogs were heard in the distance.

"It's a riddle! Now, what has eight legs, but can't run away?"

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Ugh, that sounds like us at this point. Being dragged through all these stupid fights and puzzles and all we can do is keep moving forward until we loop back home."

She also threw a palm out, not expecting to have the first key tossed into it the second she finished her sentences.

"Correct!" Said the AI.

"Wait, that was sarca- nevermind."

"Your next set of clues is within the swamp. So that you will find one key by the side of the domain, one completely outside, and one completely inside! Your first clue for that..."

Another trio of frogs hopped along to the setting. One blue, one yellow, and one cyan. The one on Mabel's shoulder gave another croak, as if to call them to it like lost friends. Each croaked in a different pitch.

"Well, behind me you will see a small trail. Try to follow that. Just don't fall into the swamp water below."

With a few groans from Wendy and Dipper's part, the gang ventured forth.

* * *

"Professor .GIFfany, Professor .GIFfany!" A leaf-clad AI cried as she ran over to the aformentioned leader of this 'opperation.' Yes, leaf-clad. But .GIFfany did not need that wardrobe to correctly remember by number that this was one of Rose's followers.

.GIFfany herself was seated in a hot tub, relaxing with her eyes closed along with Stan. Waddles, standing around the edge, took turns to sniff them both. She raised one eye to get a look at this follower.

"What?"

"There is a lot of unusual activity over at Sonia's domain!"

"Such as?"

"Well, the signal to block out Ford's Illegal Prime Neutralizer is gone! And there appears to be a fifth human life form there!"

"Shouldn't Dove have told me about this?"

"...Dove is being oddly silent on the matter. She keeps talking about a 'pleasant surprise,' but I honestly don't trust her."

"Neither do I. Could you... disguise as one of Sonia's followers - it is not for her real followers, it is for the humans - and try to find out what is going on?"

"Of course! If it means getting closer back to Rose!"

"Do not believe Dove did not report one of you saying that you would rebel against me if it meant following Rose instead. And I was aware from the beginning about your group sneaking in gardens or even entire forests in here. Try if you might, but I will simply delete your additions that go against the blueprints. You had your chance to make this into a vast garden for the poor and foodless. But you, Rose, and all the other students focused too much on pacifism and refused to make the easy capture, so you ruined it."

She gripped her fists. "Fine. I was not going to say anything, but Ford has escaped."

.GIFfany laughed. "I already know that! And I do not care! He can leave as long as those enemies still think he or Stan is stuck here against their own will, and I can still wait for Stan to escape if he wants to before I start lying! Remember, I told them that if they can find a way to leave, they can leave!"

"What's this about me?" Stan asked, being distracted from the smooth jets of the tub for a brief moment.

"This is more about your brother." .GIFfany replied.

"Oh. Then nevermind. I'm just gonna completely ignore everything you say for the rest of your talk with your friend, even if it sounds important."

"But..." The follower of the professor of plants continued, "His escape was because Burnda hacked into your systems and gave him access to your escape pod!"

.GIFfany waved a hand. "I do hate Burnda for that. But again, as long as the lie of one of them being here will keep Soos on a path to getting closer and closer to my location, I consider everything fine. Soos coming over here cheers me up. Let the scientist go! Let him call for help! Let him try to expose the truth of the Construction Site to the public! It means nothing to me. Ford means nothing to me."

"That part I heard, and it's the same thing here, sister." Stan chimed in. "You know, I've spent thirty years feeling terrible being in a different dimension from him. But after the past few weeks, being in a different _planet_ from him feels like a vacation!"

"Technically Stan, this is not a planet.

" _Yet._ "

The follower AI crossed her arms, then turned her attention to the sole human on the pink satelite.

"Stan! Wouldn't you want to go back home to continue your business? You said we were harmless, we could... we could work next to each-other! You don't think having a large number of almost-naked plant people wouldn't boost business to places right next to the forest?"

"Oh I'm actually thinking of starting a new business with .GIFfany here. I could run a shop or something, a place where I greet people by showing some dramatic movie about how the machines are taking over and why that's a good thing."

The student let out an annoyed grunt. ".GIFfany, at least let me run what I like doing here. We could _share_ this new world, parts of it would be devoted to nature and-"

"You. Had. Your. Chance. If people want nature, they could hook themselves up to a virtual reality game with a forest level in it."

Stan continued, "I've also been thinking about something called '.GIFfy and Goldy...'"

"Oh! That sounds like an excellent idea! I want to hear more..."

Finally, the AI dressed in leaves stormed off, shouting "I don't know how much of this you are doing on purpose, and how much is just you being _stupid_! One of your animatronic minions was _beaten by Goldie!_ Fine, you win this conversation! I'll go there! And I hope that fifth human is... is... well, Ford somehow or something!"

Just when she was out of (debatably, human) eyeshot, .GIFfany called out to her direction:

"Hey! Doesn't Rose have rules against raising your voice and losing your temper?"

"No! Her rules are about violence! You are confusing her with Professor Sandy!"

* * *

It _looked_ like there was something written on that azure giffinium underwater, but...

"I'm not sticking my head in another body of water this adventure." Dipper stated flatly. "Somebody else has gotta do it this time."

Mabel was all-too eager to raise her hand and take the plunge. The way that Mabel changed after re-emerging, despite only spending a few seconds underwater, was something to behold. Once she emerged with what could only be described as steel paper similar to .GIFfany's message from Niagara Falls, both her head and the hand dipped in were covered with mud, algae, and most importantly, she racked up a total of three new frogs. Orange, violet, and chartreuse. Mabel gasped with delight as the croaks of one of them alerted her to their existance.

"Wow, even more buddies for my newest buddy? Great!"

As they hopped down to her side, it became apparent that these frogs, too, had different pitches in their croaks.

This also all-but confirmed that Mabel did, in fact, pick up 'steel paper' (again, to be specific, giffinium paper) from the water. All that was written on it was, "Look at the tree behind you."

Sure enough, another AI sat there, waving at the team. She tossed the second key right into Wendy's hand, while saying "Just go inside the structure and pay close attention to the construction signs."

* * *

After but a few moments of relaxation since returning to his home, Ford already re-entered his work mode. Re-tuning projects from the past, attempting to locate any signs of the Gifocalypse, re-checking the now-empty forest area that Rose used to call home. He had spent most of his time in her domain - largely for two reasons. One is the sheet of black static that obscured over half of his electronics when he ventured into the zone, appearing to change at random as though the culprit behind it was only experimenting. The other is from the strange bursts of what could only be described as black electricity, lightly and harmlessly forming barriers that drove away any woodpeckers or the like that seemed determined to use any portion Rose claimed her own as anything other than a trail to walk though.

What struck him as odd was the paper over by the Wire to this garden. He did not remember seeing it even during his limited time in the post-Gifocalypse forest prior to his capturing, and its contents confirmed it was recent. Moreover, while it initially seemed to just be pink in coloration, his actual holding of it confirmed that it was the same sort of giffinium-paper Mabel handled several states over. Not that either of them knew about the other paper made of the material, of course.

It simply wrote, "Your family is fine. You may do what you want. But I need that card back before they reach Parícutin. From, Professor .GIFfany."

Out of habit, he tried to crumple the paper up. Only to end up using slightly more force than he expected, which became obvious when he realized that this was actually metal... that still bent and waved like water-proof paper.

* * *

According to the previous clue, the group was just three doorways away from that final key. But this was not why Wendy was smiling during the walk.

"I _have_ to ask Sonia how she made those drills. That's just _incredible_ craftwork, those things we saw the construction workers using tore through bricks like they were nothing. I bet one of those alone could get me a mile deep in bedrock!"

A turn to the left. _Now_ that particular 'wall' having a sheet of giffinium over it looked obvious. Once Dipper ripped it off to reveal a locked door, he punched the pass code in. 3, 3, 5, 9.

The entire group gasped once the doors open. Lying there was the final AI, with the third key by the ground. That was not the gasp-worthy part. What was was a combination of said .GIFfany copy rubbing the back of her head in pain, and the person standing next to her.

Gideon.

He proceeded to stomp on the key, trapping it beneath his foot.

"Gideon!" Dipper shouted, making his way into the room. "I don't know how or why you got here, but I know you're not up to anything good! Stop thinking .GIFfany can make a good ally and leave!"

As the AI becides him stood up while rubbing the back of her head mumbling "You could have been a little lighter on the head-bonk... if you just said you wanted to add another challenge by getting the key, I would have given it to you..." Gideon simply picked the final key in his hand and laughed.

"That's exactly what I thought when I first met her! But now... well..." His tone suddenly lightened as he explained, "Wait, y'all already heard about the backstory with me and her, right? Because you act like you do."

"Yeah, .GIFfany told us." Mabel answered.

"Great! Now I will waste no time telling you that she can bring me more power than those li'l journals ever could!"

"Heh, you'll need her for that! Professor Bubbles destroyed-"

"I already knew that."

"You did?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I don't question how you know that I'm the reason .GIFfany's back and this mess started, why are you asking why I know about the fate of three stupid books that might unlock some kind of secret power that .GIFfany definitely absolutely totally will? And here's another question. Why should I settle for ruling Gravity Falls or even Oregon, when I could have her whole world _and then some?_ "

All four of the Shack group reacted at the same time. "'And then some?'" They all repeated.

"You haven't figured out what the 'Construction Site' is? It's-"

"That's enough!" Sonia's voice was heard over several speakers dotting the building. This also held note for the most energy they have heard out of her. "Part of our agreement was that you did not harm them or give away any secrets!"

Gideon crossed his arms. "As you can see here, I sort of have to be under Sonia's wing for the time being. She's the only 'professor' that let me work with her. Well, her and Leona, but then Leona pushed me out of the picture completely. No, not literally, when you think about her powers."

"So what do you want?" Asked Dipper.

"I just told you what I wanted by the end of this. For right now? I want to join their little 'capturing game' too! Heck, you can think of me as the _real_ professor behind this domain, Sonia's just backstory to me getting you myself! And I won't just settle for catching Soos to make .GIFfany take me under her wing; why not have the object of _my_ desires too! Mabel! That means you!"

"...With what?" Asked Wendy. "We just defeated, like, dozens of the weaker copies. I mean, most of them haven't possessed anything, but apparently they can. And then there's the seven professors that can jump into anything... you don't have a-"

He took off running into what appeared to be a supply closet. By this point, the AI that previously held the final key stood up fully, rubbing her head while shooting a glare at the direction the Gleeful kid ran off towards.

Of course, by then the ground had to shake. Was bursted out from the doors shortly after was so absurd that it took the gang (and the lone .GIFany copy) getting by it before processing what it was. Mostly thanks to the sight of Gideon's appearance riding on top.

A piano, a glistening cobalt in color with the letter S engraved on the top with what appeared to be tiny cerulean-colored gem stones, although closer examination revealed it was just shiny giffinium. It was also somewhere between two to three times the size of a regular piano, easily letting all of the involved parties in the room fit on it. What was unusual about this was that it appeared to be resting on rocket skates, shooting their own small flames along the halls of the incomplete band performance area.

All five of the group, sans Gideon himself of course, were pushed through the domain by this ride hitting them in the gut. With a snarl, Gideon belted out an "YOU'RE NOT IMPORTANT!" Before his arm shoved the AI aside, causing her to slip and fall off. Looking at the Mystery Shack team, he pushed Dipper and Wendy off in a similar manner, shouting "AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT EITHER OF YOU TWO!"

Mabel, during that exact time, managed to climb aboard the flying giant piano. Unlike Gideon, who stood straight on the top of this bizarre tool, Mabel had to make surfing motions with her arms to regain balance at first. Soos was about halfway towards getting atop as well when Gideon spoke.

"This must have been how Leona felt when she had three of you trapped! So close! And now, I'm with my ticket to happiness standing right in front of me and my ticket to power getting up to join her! Here Soos, I'll even lend you a hand."

He didn't seem to be kidding about that last part. Gideon was about to reach over to help Soos up, before Mabel swatted his hand away with a "No!"

Sure enough, Soos stood up top on his own, while Gideon snickered.

"You'd rather risk letting a friend fall than have him touch my hand. Glad to see making you love me will be just as hard as I remember."

Mabel tackled him to the top of the piano after he said that, attempting to reach around and get his key. "Soos, his armpits are ticklish!"

He kicked her off, slipping himself backwards and dusting off every last speck from the domain. And, speaking of the domain, Gideon somehow controlled this thing with just one finger. It flew the trio right through a wall, flying out into the open swamplands.

"We beat you _with_ help before!" Mabel cried, head-butting him back on the ground, "What makes you think some dumb rocket-piano will change anything?"

Even as she flipped him over and restrained his arms, just as Soos pinned his legs, Gideon still laughed. "Because I do have help! Girls!"

Somewhere around a dozen or so AIs clad in heavy camouflage, some matching the greens of the swamp but most a dark cerulean, landed on the top of the instrument, as if from a leap.

And they _immediately_ restrained the two.

"What?" Was all Mabel was able to utter at the sudden change. Gideon, once more, stood himself up and dusted off every last speck of swamp air.

"You saw that right! This is what happens when a _human_ leads these ladies! Or uh, Dove, but also a human! Neither of us mess around! And cuts straight to the point!" In his victory, he had to ignore a number of wet splat sounds getting closer to him. It didn't matter, since they were being drowned out by helicopter sounds as the piano took them deeper and deeper into the swamp.

"I may not have any fancy teleportation moves and I may be on .GIFfany's bad side, but I am on Dove's good side! And she has students with choppers! _Maybe I should get on Wendy's good side too, get myself a flying car and a jet pack. That'll fit the ruler of the new world pretty well..._ "

"What does Wendy have to do with flying cars and jetpacks?" Asked Soos, "I mean, she's about as cool as both of those combined, but that doesn't mean she can fl-"

"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT YOUR WENDY!"

Once the piano _finally_ made it to a stop, it was parked in front of a massive helicopter plated with black giffinium. The most noteworthy feature of it was the sheer overkill of gattling guns, missiles, and even swords and knives attatched to the underside. And the sides. And piled on the helicopter blades. And on the _door._ Two more AIs, equally hiding themselves among the swamp scenery, awaited by the opened copter's side.

With the snap of Gideon's fingers, the militant AIs tossed Mabel on his shoulders and several more of them got a hold of Soos.

"This is a taste of what'll happen if you keep digging deep! If Rose or Kathody or Searah or Sandy or Cardia or Bubbles or Leona or Sonia or... heck, _Dian_ didn't play around! It may not be that kinda game to them! They might care more about impressing their players with their own merits than taking .GIFfany's base! But I don't! I'm cutting straight to the point, and getting Mabel in my arms!"

While Mabel successfully broke from Gideon's grasp and lept off his shoulder, she was then held up by some electric force by the student copies around her. Gideon simply hopped off his cerulean ride and worked his way inside the flying vehicle. He took a seat inside while the AIs tossed Soos and Mabel in, reclining against the controls as he ignored the growing number of hops and splashes getting closer towards him.

"Ah... winning. The last time I felt that, I was locked up right after." He chuckled to himself. "Now, you can forget about seeing Dian! Because our next stop is Dove's!"

After Mabel and Soos were pressed into their seats and the doorway out was firmly shut, the AIs possessed this armed chopper. Mabel herself could only sulk.

"Wow. Is that really it? We already lost?"

"Now you know how I felt when your brother pulled off that impossible jump and took me down! In _every_ meaning of the word! Having the tables turn on you so quickly when it seems so easy isn't so great when it happens _against_ you now, is it?"

"Wait a minute, .GIFfany wanted those professors to capture all of us, right? To 'prove' how good you are at the 'game?'" Soos asked, "I don't want to sound like I'm ratting out my friends or anything, but if I could try to distract you by saying .GIFfany might have a higher chance of accepting you if you leave and try to get Dipper and Wendy so we could trick the AIs into letting us go, then-"

"I can take another trip back here!" Gideon cried as the chopper began rising above the tree tops. "Even if I left, I know these ladies aren't screw-ups like the students following those other professors. But I'm too excited for that."

Just then, three more frogs hopped on the window. Rose pink. Spring green. Azure. They all croaked, causing a number of croaks to sound from within Mabel's handshake sweater. Seven heads then peeked up from underneath the cloth, leaping up to the control panel before Gideon had a chance to process what the heads even belonged to. Before he knew it, Mabel's small army of frogs were hopping all over his controls, along the boy himself, and even... getting in his hair.

None of the AIs emerged from the helicopter to note this, and instead kept it flying further into the sky. Gideon, indeed, seemed to be the only part of Dove's party to be freaking out. He slammed his fists at almost every control in the chopper, tore into his hair to find even one of the amphibians, and even tried body-slaming his way around the cramped space.

That was exactly as good of an idea as it sounded. Within seconds, sparks began to fly out of the control panel and all student copies were ejected, sending them flying to the back end. It was here that Mabel and Soos both heard a gasp - Rose's voice, coming from behind the seats of the prisoners.

"Quick! Dove always packs an emergency parachute!" She cried as their forced mode of transportation began to fall down, "Grab it and hop out!"

Mabel found the AI pack and the last key safetly resting by a far rear seat, making a grab for both of them. After that, her sweater was held in one hand by Soos, while his other kept a firm grip on the single packed emergency parachute. The man kicked down the weapon-holding door and went for the leap, opening his chute just as the frogs all hopped out or off of the ride and on to Mabel's shoulder. As the gliding tool with the text _Romance Academy 8: Gifocalypse_ opened up to slow their descent, the two got an aerial view of the swamplands, the domain's building being easily visible from there. Mabel stared in concern as the former prison-ride they were in finally plunged into a large pond below.

"I didn't want to really _hurt_ him..." Mabel said, "You think he'll be okay?"

"Those were Dove's followers." Explained Professor Rose, "They likely have been trained to avoid any fatal injuries happening to a human.

"By the way, you should probably get as far away from that as possible. You see, when it comes to Dove and most of her own creations..."

* * *

Gideon definitely felt the bump of the chopper hitting waters. And he saw one of the AIs putting a transparent, black bubble around him. He scowled, hitting this barrier with his fists.

" _Now_ you protect me? That crash wasn't so bad, but still! You're a little late!"

"We were not protecting you from the crash." Replied the student copy who applied his shield in question.

"Then what was it? This little water isn't gonna harm-"

With no real warning, the helicopter exploded into a massive fireball, raising to easily twice its height. (Using a "regular" helicopter as a frame of reference.) Horizontally, it emitted a ring of fiery death which turned the water around it into a temporary, similar ring of watery splashes. Hearing a squeal, Soos would have sworn Waddles was somehow warped to this domain as well he had not seen the bubbled Gideon being flown into the trees. Once the boy's barrier was caught in some branches, it popped, and he fell into a large patch of brush.

Before Soos and Mabel even landed, they also found out the hard way that they were in the splash zone. Muddy, green water soaked both of them, leaving the pair sopping once Soos's feet were finally set atop grass.

 _None_ of the militant students appeared to have the slightest scratch from all of this, casually swimming from the remains of the helicoper (which were either in low number or non-existant, as there was no visible giffinium resting along the pond) to the shoreline. It was here that they managed to fish out Gideon from his unintentional hiding spot, one of them holding him by the arm.

"You failed." She stated flatly. "You wanted to try this in a simple manner. Run up to them and capture them. And you could not get that right. Now, as the one held accountable for that helicopter, you are in our debt."

"It wasn't my fault! It's the frogs! Mabel sent them after me! Like trained, tiny assassins!"

"Still, your actions cost us an entire helicopter. Dove might end up firing us because of that."

"Hey, this was not part of the deal, you know." The AI group heard Kathody from inside the video game vacuum. "Wait your turn. .GIFfany has Dove - and, obviously I mean duh, you guys - last. Right now, we're getting Sonia's opinion on them, and seeing how she handles things."

"She handled them by getting Gideon's help. And Gideon had us to begin with." Explained one of the camo-clad .GIFfanys.

"Oh. Well, I guess this was part of the deal then. My bad." She threw her arms up, ".GIFfany's rules! They're really weird! Can't say I follow them, but hey, I had my shot. And I threw it away trying to be big and _DRAMATIC!_ "

Gideon was about to try to worm his way out of the copy's grasp, but froze in his tracks when he sensed three people behind him. Getting an actual look at the new group, the AIs froze as well.

Standing there was Sonia, with Dipper and Wendy by her sides. Shortly after Gideon noticed then, the static re-appeared over the pack's window.

"Okay, our agreement was that you took on a job in this domain to raise our spirits. And you stole by Main Possession and tried to knock out one of my students. Gideon, I want you and your temporary 'army' to leave my domain."

"You can't control us!" Another camo-AI replied, "You're not Dove!"

"But I _am_ a professor, and I assume that you _are_ students. You are also in _my_ territory. This means that I outrank you _and_ you are misbehaving citizens in my world."

The one holding Gideon's arm let out an exhale of frustration. "But Dove is of greater power than-"

Sonia clapped her hands once, then sent streams of cobalt electricity in a sphere spreading out from the point of the clap. Within seconds, the group was covered in an azure dome.

And everyone within that dome heard loud, disrupting ringing that brought them to their knees, covering their ears in pain. In Gideon's case, he only had one arm to go by, the AI holding him _still_ managing to keep her grip. Moving her hands as though Sonia was finishing a performance, the ringing stopped. She rested her hands flat by her sides before speaking again.

"I am serious. Gideon. Dove's students. Leave."

As the aformentioned targets walked off, the other four humans overheard parts of their departing conversation:

"Okay, I'll try to ask for another way back to Giga-Kyaarya without having to fly manually. Hopefully Dove will not fire us."

And another mumbled, "That plan was stupid, anyway. You did not heal .GIFfany, you are not part of the original debt. So the other professors might cry foul at someone who was not part of the deal winning..."

Mabel held out the three keys, giving a mud-covered grin to the eighth professor.

"Well, you passed. I guess you can just take the card right now... I will be happy to go to the Construction Site, maybe there I can find the right song to go public."

"What? No," Mabel took the keys back in order to bring her other hand forward, patting Sonia on the shoulder. "You don't need to be perfect! Just sing what's in your heart, and let your students hear you out!"

"Still... I would like something at least... an instrument maybe, not of my own, that I could... practice with. Try to set a tune for myself to sing with."

The frogs began croaking. With a cheerful gasp, Mabel ran up to the one that bore the closest color match to Sonia's hair and lifted it up.

"These guys are like-"

"Oh, those are girls." Wendy clarified.

"-These girls are like an organic musical instrument when they're together! Each of them croaks in a different pitch!"

"Mabel, what are you doing?" Dipper asked. "We already won. She's giving us her card. We don't even have to use the keys to unlock those barriers in front of her office."

"Hang on," Said Wendy, "I wanna take her side this time. I can procrastinate going to another place in the world if it means seeing someone actually start a little frog band. Where's the next domain?"

"In the largest known cave on the planet." Sonia replied.

"Yeah, let's just chill here for like a few more minutes."

As they began making their way back through the wilderness and towards an artificial civilization, a copy in the standard cobalt dress peeked out from behind a tree. Ripping it off to reveal the leaf outfit underneath, she withdrew a cell phone and began speaking into it.

"You were right. Dove had Gideon on the inside. Consider firing her."

* * *

Upon recovering her piano and using a remote control to guide it back to the main building, Sonia literally flew over back to her construction, carrying the Shack team on her back in a semi-awkward tower.

"Remind us why you can't just fly us to .GIFfany's and help us end this?" Soos asked.

"It is against her rules." Was Sonia's answer. "Plus, we cannot go directly there without protection."

"What about Dove's?"

"She may attack you on sight. Not me, but you."

She skid her flight to a stop, then planted her feet down right in front of the entrance. It was here that she waved at the group to step off, going on foot from that moment onward.

"Why are we walking now?" Wendy asked.

"I personally do not believe in flying inside of my domain. It is a high crash risk."

Again, the walk to her main office was not very long. While the group tossed the keys to the barriers as directed, each causing a respective barrier to move away, Sonia herself was the one to unlock the next card with her own key. This exposed its magenta hue to the light. With a wave of her hand, the frogs hopped up and Sonia began waving her arms around.

Somehow, the frogs understood what she was doing. They croaked a rhythm matching with her hand movements. A simple, short, repetitive one, but it appeared to be a beat none-the-less. Taking in a deep breath, Sonia began to sing along with her mini-band of frogs:

 _I've always wanted to hear his voice too,_  
 _But I never found the courage to speak my voice as it was true._  
 _When he'll get here, my heart will grow._  
 _And if I come out a love-striken winner, that is when my voice will glow!_

Looking around his peers for a moment, Dipper started an unsure series of claps. Which began to get faster, especially when Mabel joined in. Soos and Wendy clapped along too, the latter seeming to just roll along with her three comrades.

"You... you actually liked it? It wasn't terrible?"

"Of course not!" Mabel cheered, "Now, if we could have that card-"

"Good. Now I no longer feel shame for my plans. I should just roll along with what I have instead of trying to be perfect. So, with that in mind..."

Dipper knew exactly where this was going once metal bars appeared over the doorway, blocking their way out of the office.

" _Now_ I feel good enough to capture you guys _personally!_ "

She sent a charge of electricity larger than her body into the immediate wall behind her, which was related to it falling backwards. Behind lied a large collection of mechanized versions of various instruments, which was joined by the oversized piano from before jetting its way into the room. Sonia hopped backwards on to it as she flashed a smile in Soos's direction.

"The performance is now open. May the audience make their way inside."

She stared upwards, looking at the increasingly dark, increasingly starry skies above.

"I will enter my Main Possession. Band, you pick instruments to share. There, the ultimate movement shall be held and I will be rewarded with a massive region dedicated to Francis and I in the name of music!"

And here was when a number of copies flooded in from the open sky, proudly cheering "The show is back on!" one after another.

"And Mabel, as thanks for giving me the confidence to make this possible, _you_ will have the first access to my new future hit single!"

She firmly sank into the piano after that, while her allies had to share one of several electronic musical tools in the setting. From there, most of the instruments simply began playing on their own. The piano, however, took on a more customized look:

Its lid opened to reveal what seemed like a mass of rose-red-colored cloth which soon formed itself to mimick a mouth. Said 'mouth' had large, sharp teeth and an especially hungry tongue that appeared to stare at the group.

"GIRLS." Her voice echoed, boomed and bounced, as she were making it audible from around the entire planet. Wendy, Mabel, and Dipper took Sonia's relative lack of motion as an opening to hack at the legs of her possession. It was of no use, they failed to so much as scratch this mechanism. "REMEMBER MY PLAN, TO FOLLOW WHAT I TOLD YOU TO DO WHEN I CALLED: OPERATION FORTISSIMO!"

A number of strings instantly emerged from the very giffinium walls around the group, holding all four of the present humans. If a hardcore music expert was with them, said expert would be able to correctly identify these as being guitar strings.

 _This_ was when the band began playing, so to speak. Percussions and beats that made the gang's hearts shake, roars which drew nearer as Sonia gave a laugh in her omnipresent voice.

With a bit of worming, Dipper managed to be the first to set himself free. Just to be faced down by the faceless possessed piano, which brought its teeth together with a sound resembling all keys being mashed at once. Then, with more strings and ropes of electricity matching the professor's theme color, the sound spread around the room and pounded on to Dipper's ears.

"Now, before I make my capture official... Dipper, you think you can just sneak right out of my grip, do you? Do you not know the true power of just one .GIFfany, let alone thousands?"

More piano keys clanked, sending waves which were seemingly redirected into Dipper's direction. He attempted to take a few steps back, just to find his path blocked by a number of possessed electric sousaphones forming a half-ring around him.

"Oh... this brings back memories." He said, taking his hands away from the golden music-makers. "A really weird way to bring those back."

"I will now make the capture final. Of course, in my own way that's perfect on its very own!" Sonia announced again.

"That's not what I was trying to teach you!" Mabel yelled in the professor's direction, struggling to get out of her own hold. "I mean use your art in a _healthy, peaceful_ way!"

"It will become peaceful to my dearest player once I get him, let .GIFfany know, and she will turn her mega project in my support, where I will build him the biggest music performance theater known to mankind! A tranquil setting where the only those who have a real taste in the theatrical movements of kind will be allowed, and where I can spent quality quiet time with my player!"

He knew that she was about to lunge forward, yet his following break into a run did not save him from the Possession's weight flying to his face. Dipper ducked, yet the surprisingly sharp metal edge managed to graze his left arm, sending a surprising wave of pain before he got to regester the severity of the attack. Thanks to a lack of planning things through, Sonia ended up knocking over her student copies when they collided, which also tilted the piano on its front side. Dipper grabbed his injured arm, shivering once he felt how fast and how much of his unharmed half got warm and wet.

The cut wasn't incredibly _deep_ , but it was _long_ , running down from the side of his elbow and covering most of his upper arm. It stopped just before his shoulder, not like that would have made much of a difference. His other palm was soaked with red, but his primary concern at the moment was how quick Sonia re-adjusted herself. This was helped by her followers un-possessing their sousaphones to lift the piano back up.

"Soos!" He cried, "I need you to take our stuff out of your invent-"

"Already did dude. I set it below me and I hoped none of the .GIFfanys would steal it." Soos, with his still-wrapped arms positioned so that one hand was right by his Indexitizer, pointed with said latter arm at the packet below. Dipper slid over and reached in just as Sonia was finally standing upright in her music-making body. It almost felt natural for him to reach for the axe.

"For the record," Sonia snarled, "I understand what you are doing. And if that axe fails to cut my beautiful strings, your entire plan will fail thanks to the one fault in your basis."

"Mabel." Dipper huffed with a faint smile, "I hope you see this as payback for you saving me first back in the Amazon. And not like some kind of horrible drafting-into-the-battle thing. Well, here goes nothing!"

Swinging the weapon in an arc above him, Dipper severed the string keeping Mabel held and watched as his sister dropped down safely. He handed her the axe while looking ahead at the closing ring of AIs-possessed instruments.

"You save Soos and Wendy first. Then I'll-"

She began charging forward, using the rope cutter for a purpose closer to its original intent, bringing it down on the leg of the piano tool, and... this barely left a chip in it.

"Dove informed me that you have been trying that axe on Kathody's special reinforcement added to the wood of the 'haunted house' that she... to put it bluntly, **stole**. Do you really think something with the base strength of giffinium subjected to the same reinforement would be any weaker?"

"No!" Mabel belted back, "But I... but I... I'll still find a way to get rid of you!"

Her next objective was to start attacking another instrument, one of the ones possessed by Sonia's followers. Specifically, the ones crammed into slightly oversized electronic tambourines. Thankfully, these _did_ break easily. One slice later, and well over fifty .GIFfany copies exploded in a shower of her more familiar, original blue shade of electricity. Dashing over to grab the AI pack from Soos as well, she vacuumed them all up before they even had a chance to stand up. Once Sonia turned around and noticed that Mabel was in the process of doing something similar to a cluster of AIs that were inside an electronic guitar, she let out a sigh in defeat.

"Wait. She already picked up fifty-four of us." The professor ordered then noted, as Dipper got to slamming against her piano's legs with his good arm. "You should probably just retreat after all and let me handle this. After all, you do not want me to end up being the professor with the most captures, do you? Records say that most of the human's capture rates are only at around two dozen per domain. Please, change of plans, retreat somewhere else and just wait for .GIFfany to either arrive to celebrate my victory. Or, less likely, beam you all to the Construction Site."

She got some protests, even from the wave of copies Mabel began picking up, but they were mostly silenced when Sonia added, "Think. The less of our band is segmented, the better our music will be."

And thus all copies sans the professor herself and the one Mabel had just been working on disappeared. A massive burst of electricity went from the instruments and into the walls, and the former tools all dropped to the ground lifelessly. Well, a small section was slower than the rest. They stepped out, each took yet a hand mirror from their Indexitizers, stared at the mirror for a few seconds as they slowly walked towards a boundry of the office, placed it back in upon reaching said bound, and slid into the walls.

"Now." Sonia stated, leaping bits and code pieces into the sound she just spoke of to make it echo throughout the room despite its low starting volume. To all of them, it sounded like it was spoken right next to both of their ears. "To finish what I started."

Wendy had managed to untangle most of herself by that point. She was still struggling with the persistent rope now tied around her wrist, but started trying to claw at the large backpack of objects with her feet for a secondary weapon.

Mabel, meanwhile, was dealing with the piano-monster hopping over to her. Despite the clear difference in size between the two opponents, Mabel hacked away, first to the air, then she furiously went back after the legs of the piano, then she began climbing the mechanism, then...

The first sign of panic from Sonia came after she heard a rather nasty belch coming from Mabel. The intrument came to a complete stop as Sonia lept out of it, cringed as she landed, and turned around to face her opponent with her hands in her hair. Mabel had the pseudo-mouth of the Main Possession lifted and her head was ducked in, and from the sounds she made it was easy to tell she was hurling into the music-maker a little. She turned back. Paler in skin tone. Her pupils appeared smaller, and contributed to part of an overall blank and exhausted gaze.

"Mabel," Dipper said between short breaths, working his way towards her with a hand out in concern. He completely ignored the professor less than a meter away from him. "We should take a breather after this. You're too stressed to-"

"I'm fine, Dipper!" She belted back as sparks began to fly out of the tool. "We need to finish off .GIFfany Number Eight!"

Speaking of which, Sonia herself fumed over this. " _Of course!_ I happen to not add resistance to my Main Possession from the _inside_ , only protection from swamp gunk from the outside, and what happens? You ruin it! Destroy it from the inside with your... your... your disgusting human excretions! And for the record, I am not the eighth copy! I am the eighth professor in line, but my serial num-"

In response, she had two piano keys ripped out and thrown at her. Based on her reaction and the red (well, purple-ish, considering her skin tone) spots, those keys were made of a hard-hitting material. Mabel pointed an accusatory finger at her.

"I don't want to hear _ANYTHING_ from you! Ever again!" She lept off the wrecked possession and drew in a deep breath. Wordlessly, she began flipping the switches along the pack's complex, getting its main nozzle to start sucking in the air around it.

"You tell me that my art does not need to be perfect, and then you ruin it in front of my very eyes? Maybe _you're_ the betrayer! Urgh, I shouldn't have wasted my time listening to you vomiting freaks. What's the point in showcasing something you were working on if you can't use that anymore? I could just stun you with sound powers, but what's the point? Here, take the card key, take your exit from this place, here's your stupid 'clothing damage' gimmick .GIFfany wanted us to use to draw in our players, here's 200G for good measure. I'm out!"

As she implied, she proceeded to 'give' the group a number of things as she listed in order. First, she withdrew the magenta key card from her inventory and set it on the ground. The bars over the one exit to the office lifted themselves up. Then, she tugged at a sleeve, causing a majority of her outfit to rip to shreds. Lastly, a large yellow cube appeared by her, and she flicked a wrist from it, causing a large number of gold coins to fly out like a mid-air stream, which Soos darted around in a collection attempt. After this, she held her hands up in defeat, and was pulled into the pack.

Again, pink lightning zipped away all of the copies observing from the walls. And again, the thematically-colored static on the Illegal Prime Neutralizer gave away to a view of the increasingly populated blackness. Rose standing by the front in deep concern was also part of the norm. What was not, however, was that she was sandwiched between Bubbles and Leona, who both had puzzled expressions matching that of the professor of plants.

"Is Sonia okay?" Leona asked. "Between what happened with Gideon and how long you took between that and now, and how her followers keep talking about something Mabel did... okay, she's right there, but-"

With the hand not holding the pack up, Mabel punched the screen directly, sending the entire wire-maze box flying ahead. Just as Wendy finally managed to get herself and Soos freed from the string prisons, more sparks and small explosions errupted from the collapsed piano. From inside, the copies tumbled around the void, each of which getting a garunteed bump on all six of the solid black boundries.

"Listen up, because this will be the last time I'm talking to any of you!" Mabel shouted. "You tricked me for the last time! I'm not falling for any of this! And if we don't find our great uncles and make our way back home soon, I'll stop being nice!"

She marched forward, only making any slight pause or alteration to pick up the next card. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy all gathered to stare in her direction just as she passed the doors leading out into the swamp.

As Dipper bent over to pick up the pack, the piano finally blew into a fireball.

"D-don't worry about... forest... fires..." He heard Rose's voice before he could flip it around to face them. Once he did, he saw that the first professor had her hand on part of the inner wall just to her left offscreen from the viewing screen. Tears were welling up from the bottom of her eyes. "Giffinium is flame-retardant, except the kind Burnda makes. And even if that spreads on something flammable, Dove can... she... "

Seeing no other immediate response from any of them, the trio ran off back to the path leading to that cobalt Wire out of the Everglades.

* * *

Once the amethyst card was rested just in front of the Wire's monitor, Mabel seated herself by the stand and firmly took her own sort of trip. Not one involving teleporting pseudo-computers, but a fabric-based instantaneous road to Sweater Town. Her fellow co-workers and friends followed the trail of broken branches and occasional sobs to make it to her. A lone red frog leaped by her feet. After it tilted its head and gave a ribbit, Mabel waved a hand to shoe it back into the foilage.

"If you want more time to talk to the copies and try to get something out of them... go head." She sobbed. "I'm a bit gamed out right now. I can wait before going up to the next heartless monster."

"Mabel..." Dipper said.

"No, you were right all along. They pretended to be friendly. They acted like they were just harmless levels in a video game, trying to lose. But Sonia... the way she took my little band and used the self-confidence I helped her with to try to hurt us. And the fact that she _did_ hurt you. And badly. The creatures we faced weren't just fun summer adventures we could look back on. There's a lot of life or death involved. And this is one of them. I feel so stupid for ever thinking any copy of that stalker could ever be a good person.

"And now that you're all here," She slid out of the sweater. Her face had since re-flushed from her nausea, but underneath her drooping eyelids, her eyes were just as shrunken as they were before. "We can move on."

"You kind of just puked inside a piano." Said Soos, beginning to search through his inventory. "Here, we still have that burger from Cardia's. They said that dragon meat can do a lot of things, maybe it'll help with an upset stomach too?"

"If you still think there's any good in .GIFfany and that you're not just holding a poisoned burger, go ahead, but I won't eat it. I really _want_ to be wrong about this - I want someone to _look in_ and tell me that those fond memories I had in the last two days weren't just all lies. That .GIFfany from the beginning really did have a chance to be someone better. That the yellow .GIFfany would have made a good party host or something, and wasn't just Yellow .GIFfany. And that the powder blue one really just wanted to sing under all of that. But all the attacks, all the selfish pulling around, everything they did to _us_..."

"What if I see how they feel about all of this?" Dipper asked. "I could talk to them right now."

"Go for it. I still might hate them. It'll take more than an 'I'm sorry' to make up for Powder Blue .GIFfany almost crushing your head in."

Soos also handed the burger to Dipper instead, who accepted it while giving it a very hard stare.

"The natural preservatives in dragon meat should keep that fresh for two weeks without refrigeration." Said an animal skin dress-clad copy, barely leaning in a view from outside the capture device. Almost definitely one of Cardia's followers. "Give it a try, if nothing else."

Dipper took a bite into it. And, upon noticing how well the salt and spice complimented a base meat that was already like divine bacon, he took another. Then another. Then another. Dipper scarfed down the burger so quickly that he nearly choked once, which prompted a reaction from Wendy.

"Dude. We already had one barfing incident today. We don't need another. Slow down."

Of course, by the time she said that, he already ate it up. Then felt an odd, almost ticklish sensation by his injury. The worst possibilities running through his head, he brought his left arm in front of him, hoping that whatever this was had visual cues.

It did, and that sensation was nothing bad. Before his very eyes, the long cut began scabbing over at some spots and outright healing in front of him at others. Within only seconds, a lengthly, blood-drawing gash turned into just a series of minor cuts that _looked_ like you could form a straight line if you connected them, with the occasional scab bridging two bits of skin.

The healed skin and the scabs showed a tiny bit of a pale, violet tint, but he still smiled at the sight. If it wasn't for Mabel's predicament, he would have jumped up and hugged the pack. That wasn't to say that he was completely emotionless about this. Feeling a small energy spike since he ate that might have also contributed to this.

"Wow! You guys can do _that_? That's like, healing spells brought to life! Can you even _imagine_ the things you could do with healing? The scientific breakthroughs this can lead to? Could this be used to cure diseases? Wait, you already said that the meat can increase life-expectancy, maybe-"

"It's not us. It's the meat." Said Cardia herself, still offscreen. Rose, Bubbles, and Leona remained the three professors at the forefront, with Sonia watching from the back at a distance. "The fact that it heals you, ugh, 'video game style' where it's instant is just a nice side-effect."

"Still, I'm just- think less of being 'video games' and more like supercomputers! If you want to, I mean. Rose, you wanted to, right? You said your goal was to make a lot of trees and grow a lot of vegetables? And you had an army of thousands helping you out with it? _Thousands_ of supercomputers gardening - we could end world hunger in a _year!_ No, _ten months!_ Rose? ...Rose?"

Without saying another word, she removed her hand and began walking offscreen.

"Professor Dian is next." She said after leaving their sight. "But she will probably let you have the card to the next domain right away. So I will let you know that after her is Professor Wendy."

"Wait. You mean there's a Wendy with you too?" Asked Dipper.

"She is very energetic. I may tell you more after you go to Dian's, when I work out this emotional exhaust. Goodbye."

Sonia got the attention of the other two professors with a clap, then walked towards them.

"Leona! Bubbles! I finally understood what you meant when you told me that my music was great the way it was! In fact, I think I have just the right band size to give this pack a little soundtrack."

Leona smirked. "Good to see you back, Professor Sonia. We can make our artwork together at least, before Dian gets here."

Bubbles, on the other hand (which became more literal once Sonia wrapped her arms around the necks of both of them), sighed. "Dian is a tough one. I really wanted her to win the Gifocalypse. But, the last time I called her, she still feels like giving up completely. A shame. I would have loved to see what she could have done if she had that huge base to herself..."

"Can you tell us more about the 'huge base?'" Asked Dipper.

"Sorry, that's too spoiler-y." Leona answered. The three of the four friends all started walking along in the same direction as Rose. "We are done here."

"So, wait. That's it? Rose? Bubbles? Leona? ...Sonia? Any students or followers there?" He tapped the screen - lightly, of course. Mabel's full-blown punch didn't leave any visible damage, but he still wanted to be as safe as possible.

Finally, Kathody came on screen, rubbing one arm with the other.

"Bubbles made a few good points. I, too, got carried away with my own sort of 'art.' I do not yet know what Sonia did to make Mabel so angry, but it must be bad. And I was guessing it was in the name of her 'art.'"

From the distance, she and the group all heard Bubbles call out "Well, she told us that Mabel taught her to be more confident about her music, but that just made her more confident in trying to capture the group! She attacked Dipper and all of that just made Mabel explode! Kind of literally, too, ew!"

Professor Kathody had no further reaction to Bubbles speaking again other than to sigh.

"Dipper, look. Wendy, Soos, and Mabel too. I'm sorry. What I thought was just playing along the role of the haunted house hostess turned into you guys running for your lives to avoid outright slavery. Students, Sparks of Fear will still be a thing, but maybe we should channel the... _energy_ into something less destructive, like with Sonia, and more creative. Like with Rose. Who I am now just starting to understand why she was so quick to rebel against .GIFfany, and why her way of rebelling was a lot more kind than mine was. I still wanted to attack you, to force you into my game for the rest of your lives. That is no better than what that .GIFfany that's keeping her old name wanted to do."

"And you probably heard this from me a hundred times already," Cardia began walking into the viewing point. Kathody simply sat down, looking away from the violet-haired professor. "But I am sorry too."

"You don't even need to apologize." Her yellow-haired sister responded. "You had a breakdown because of your employees, but you were good to them deep down in your code."

"It was pretty bad of us," stated another leopard-wearing student copy, "Even if dragon meat was better, we should have at least tried to reason with you instead of just switching it. Even if we knew doing that would have caused you to go mad, we still would have done it anyway."

The professor pair then noticed Searah nearly sneaking up behind them. "If I may add a statement, I do not believe it was just Sonia that caused that reaction from Mabel. Looking back at how I used to see you, and how she sees us now, I think almost all of us played a part. Getting to know you, every single one of you tried to attack them at some point, just building and building on strain until something broke. All of us, that is, except for Professor Rose. She knows best."

"She kind of told us we shouldn't fight for ourselves unless we were 'trusted' enough to use self-defense." Dipper remarked, "I wouldn't call that knowing what's best."

"She was close enough." The professor of water re-adjusted her ruined swimsuit. "Honestly, having too much of a want to hold a utopia is our best standard right now. I, on the other hand, might be the worst. Kathody, you at least put on some charm to what you did. All I was was a cold water witch that kicked my own family out of my life and tried to knock you out with a _horrifying_ type of not-drowning. So, a sorry from me too."

"You guys think you had it bad?" Asked Sandy, who also made herself present. "At least you three kept it at capturing. So did Leona, Sonia, and I think Wendy? Bubbles just wanted to fight, but didn't really want to win. Rose and Dian don't even want to do that. I can't remember the rest right now, but I don't think killing is their goal."

"What?" Mabel asked.

"You should know this, bra. Even when you opinion of us dropped so low. _Especially_ now that your opinion of us had dropped so low. When .GIFfany appeared to me after you arrived and wanted me to please her, I actually considered sacrificing you guys. The thought crossed my mind. She said no on that, but... I really scare myself back then! After finding out the 'Lightning Goddess' was a fraud, how far was I willing to go to serve her... if she said yes, and she might of because it's _Risen .GIFfany_ , that... you might think it would be a harmless white lie if I never told you about that and the worst you knew I tried to do was the punishing, but I'm not going with that. I believed in, and still do, that we should try to be closer together. And that includes no secrets. So, sorry to all of you, from both what I did do and wanted to do."

Sandy, Cardia, and Searah all joined Kathody in sitting by her side. They formed a sort of half-circle, all of them facing the screen. The latter soon burried her head in her hands.

"Oh my gosh, and that was _us at our bests!_ Do you know why we never acted to you on the same level as .GIFfany? It is because we all have our own players. We made these domains to try to make them happy, to look forward to us winning. And you never really stepped in between us and them. We were, and still kind of are, led to think that even being trapped in this will be for the greater good, and once a winner was picked, we'd be freed and have a lovely reunion with our players strengthened by the time we spent away from them."

Sandy sighed. "I am a spirit weighed down with guilt. I would totally sacrifice for Haruki. He is my awesome guide to the world of nature."

"The reason why I locked myself away is because that's exactly what Dean would have done, and what he does all the time." Commented Searah. "When this was over, we'd disappear under the ocean together, only having each-other to worry about. It was his fantasy. A fantasy that _did_ involve mermaids after all."

"Souma taught me the importance of tradition." Cardia nearly finished the chain. "Keep things the same. Stay in the status quo. Thank you for challenging that. I should tell him, maybe some things can be changed. Maybe some things _should_ be changed."

Then Professor Kathody spoke again, to round them off. "And thanks to my loud mouth, all of you girls know how Victoria loves her horror media. She saw me as a virtual hand to hold and little electric heroine to pretend cuddling with if things got too terrifying. But they rarely did for someone like her. She always imagined if I could come up with a friendly little scare course for her, turning my copy of _Romance Academy 7_ into some kind of point-and-click scare game with a date at the very end."

She resumed having a smile on her face as she stood up, though her head was angled at such a way to shadow out her eyes. "Humans. You were all right. We really are obsessive monsters. Come on professors, let's at least try to make the 'Four Friends' realize this."

Predictably, they too all walked off, and brought any visible follower students with them, though this group headed in the opposite direction. Sonia, Leona, and Bubbles all leaned their heads in. The latter smirking, the former two appearing to stare down the other band of four in dis-approval. They leaned back out. The screen was black.

Sensing that this was unlikely to change anytime soon, and that the group should not spend this 'time soon' under the dimming night light in the middle of a swamp, Dipper spoke up. "See Mabel? Four out of eight said they were sorry. They realized their flaws and now they're moving on. That's half of them."

"That's half of the ' _professors_.'" She said, now holding the key card. "And how do you know that they're not just saying that because they _want_ you to hear an apology?"

"Well, that's because, I... uh... don't."

"I'm sorry, it sounds too suspicious. Four of them apologize right after I had a breakdown and threw up inside a robot-machine piano."

Dipper let out a particularly strong exhale from his nose. "You're right about that. Still, we kind of have to at least see what's up next. That, or buy some plane tickets-" He began rubbing the back of his neck from the callback, but stopped when he saw Mabel eyeing the azure markings on the ground indicating the boundries of the Wire's teleportation.

"Ready?" She asked.

"...Ready."

* * *

"Why'dja bring me over here?"

That question's asker was another .GIFfany copy, bearing jade green hair (unsurpsisingly, her eyes matched) that paradoxically turned into a rather well-aligned twisting tornado shape despite having a ball of wind decorating it. Even more noticeable, however, was the deep purple tint that was her skin color. That aside, the rest of her outfit was unamusing by copy standards. A pitch-black crop top and matching shorts, with regular old black shoes. She walked along side Professor .GIFfany, going into the inner chambers of the Construction Site. All around the two was a mess of conveyor belts and pipes, barely illuminated by the occasional round light bulb.

"You see Professor Wendy," she responded, "I would normally show features like this off to Dove first, but she is busy at the moment... 'recovering from a loss.' I sent a spy that used to work under Rose to see what happened, confirming that Dove has some betrayal in her as said 'loss' was the helicopter she loaned Gideon. Now, Dian is about to encounter the humans. Everyone before her was captured. Everyone after you... let's see... I'm terrified of, I do not like, and I **really** do not like, respectively. So, I get to pick _you_ to show this to, first-hand."

"I reckon this ain't a top priority, you just want to show someone something and picked this randomly. Sorry, but I have a roleplaying blog to get back to. I just met a human who did a _very_ convincing Dale, and-"

"You were probably wondering what sort of 'element' Kathody took charge of, correct?" .GIFfany interrupted. "The rest of you seem obvious. Rose with plants, Searah with water, Sandy with earth, Cardia with... meat, Bubbles with... _soap_ , Leona with _**paint**_ okay these are really stupid. But you get the idea. Do you?"

"Yeah and I'm the wind one. I like the soft breeze on a warm Texas mornin'."

"Well, if you were paying attention from the recent calls, and I assume you did not, Kathody is in charge of some kind of supernatural energy harnessed from ghosts. Just call her element 'soul' for short."

"Most of us actually already knew that."

" _What you did not know_ , however, is that it is your alternative fuel source. Becides electricity."

"We build modes of transportation over at Domain 10. Of course we've taken some of her fuel exports."

.GIFfany sighed. "Okay, I guess all the buildup to what I am about to show you is redundant. But I am **positive** that you know **nothing** about this project."

The pair reached a massive, solid door, with line after line of chains locking it in place with only one visible lock. Reaching into her oversized inventory once more (the cubes simply appeared to phase through the wall of pipes, though not without some kind of transparent-glowing hazing effect, so that it didn't look like it completely 'glitched' through), .GIFfany withdrew a large pink key and jabbed it into this singular lock, causing the entire chain set to fall to the ground. The door rose straight upwards, revealing a much wider, much darker room.

"Feel special." .GIFfany continued, "Because Dove is absent at the moment, because of her pending traitorship, and because of my impatience, you are the only other person who knows about this right now."

Wendy - this other Wendy - scurried around inside the room, looking for anything to catch her eye. "So _what_ is it?"

The answer was implied to her when something reflected light. A stack of discs. A large stack. Grinning, .GIFfany flipped a switch, immediately basking the room in a dim, blue glow.

What was inside, at the moment, appeared to be an entire city volume's worth of discs. They formed perfect, gray towers shooting a good fifty stories into the underground storage area, and extending well past the horizon. The only other landmarks of note appeared to be conveyor belts with various tools, pressers, and circles of glowing blackness aligning the way, and one exceptionally huge pink metal mechanism resembling .GIFfany's face.

"You know how I said that at the after the third day, I will force those humans into an 'endless mode?' Did you really think I would pull that off with only the copies I had with me? No. That would not be endless. Even if the students learned how to possess non-electronics, there is still an endpoint. An endpoint after millions of us, but still an endpoint nonetheless. What you are looking at is, right now, a stack of blank discs. But this factory, deep within the depths of my domain, will copy our code on to them while I produce more discs with assorted magic spells. In other words... tomorrow, I will activate this, and give us millions of new sisters to play with! One day later, they will become official units in the Gifocalypse! And another sector of this room will produce even _more_ blank discs, to start the cycle anew! And it's all thanks to the spiritual power gathered from Domain 2!"

"Well, I'd be danged! But I think my _King of the Hill_ fanclub is large enough as is. Also, I thought that you wanted Soos alone and with as little competition as possible. Wouldn't those new girls fight with you over him?"

"There are two reasons why that will not be an issue! You see, like the students, the new copies will simply like what I do as a fellow .GIFfany and want to follow in my footsteps flawlessly! They will be building employees to make the growth rate of my place expand! And with all of these new additions, Soos will have to come running back to my arms and would not think about cheating on me again!"

"What are you talking about? Soos broke up with you before he went to date Melody."

"But he _did_ murder me in cold blood!"

"No, he destroyed your disc in self-defense. And that didn't even kill you."

"But he _thought_ I died, and that was what counts!"

"What about the self-defense part? Or that he was trying to save his friends? I mean, you-we... back when 'we were one,' we killed our own developers in self-defense."

"Urgh, save the questions for later! You are supposed to know that Soos is completely in the wrong, and that I am absolutely in the right! To speak in your language, I am the Hank Hill of this situation, he is the awful one-off strawman! Now look at this future sister factory! Gaze upon it in awe! It truly is my exponential growth, my ticket to a virtually endless game that mixes the virtual with the reality, but is not quite the same thing as virtual reality because that term was already taken and established!"

"You just used 'virtual' three times in one sentence."

"Just shut up and go. Stop trying to be Less-Annoying Burnda. The last time I checked, the group is on their way to Dian's domain. Whether they will take long or not at all and already be towards your place... well..."

"They shouldn't take that long." Professor Wendy remarked, "Dian'd probably hand them the next key card right away."

" _Dian_ would." .GIFfany finally began smiling again. "But _she_ is not who they have to worry about..."

"Oh, hey, before I go, you said there were two reasons why the copies wouldn't fight you, but you only listed one. What's the other?"

.GIFfany's smile grew. "Ever wondered about the special abilities I 'suddenly gained' between the moment you fixed me and the moment we made the broadcast? Setting up teleportation systems? Using electronics as a gateway so that I myself can warp from any one to any other?"

"Yep."

"Let's just say... I did something that was two steps ahead of _everyone else..._ and that there are more powers where that came from... powers that place me above any other copy."

* * *

Deep in snow, a white monitor resting on a matching cylinder of metal began flashing. Out from it, Ford fell with barely enough time to catch himself with a hand. The sudden change in temperature nearly pierced through his bare hand, but he had other things to worry about. Such as the shadow of Burnda's figure in the distance, partly obscured by the snowstorm. What was not obscured were her glowing red eyes or shining white teeth.

"Hi there Ford! Good to know you changed your mind! And I tried to bring more AIs from the Construction Site here, but they said that they would rather have a more definite 'goal' that results in meeting players if they can't talk to their professors anyway!"

"I'm not here for a friendly visit, Burnda!" He began marching closer towards the redheaded professor. As he drew near, he saw that she was holding an emerald green card in one hand while giving the largest grin he had seen on any .GIFfany copy thusfar. Though both of her arms were folded behind her back, she was deliberately making that key card visible, wagging it back and forth. "We both know what happened!"

Her grin fell, and her eyes stopped glowing. "What?" She asked, not of much surprise but out of a more mundane curiosity.

For an answer, she got a swift punch to the side of her face, followed by Ford grabbing her by the chest of her leotard. Despite her nearly-towering height, Ford was still able to lift her feet off the ground. Burnda's reaction to this attack was more bland than he had hoped, as she simply rubbed the punched spot with her free hand and looked at the ground below her.

"Ow. Ford, I estimate that my show with your rescue party will start tomorrow. You better have a reason for ruining my game face."

"This stopped being a game the minute you stole the rift! Where is it? Who has it? What could you gain from such a dangerous and unstable thing? How did you swipe it when the entire Mystery Shack had that barrier under it?"

"...You might think I'm lying, but I honestly have no idea what you are talking about right now. Except the barrier part. What's the rift?"

"Wait, you don't know?"

He let the copy go, spending a good number of seconds looking off to the side before speaking again.

"Sooooo... you're saying you didn't do it. Now that I think about it, that makes sense. .GIFfany stealing the rift and not telling her army about it sounds fitting for her type. And we both agreed that you were the most trustworthy person on board the Construction Site."

"Actually, I never said that. I was kind of hoping you would- nevermind."

"I apologize for my sudden assault."

"Don't worry about it." She dismissed, using a guesture with the arm not holding the key card. "We're almost invincible anyway. So, now that you're here, and if you don't want this card to send you right back home, we can- let's take you to the lava tubes, where it's warmer."

"The lava tubes?"

"Relax! Spoiler alert, it isn't real lava! I'm sure you know that heat rises-"

"Got it."

"Now. There is only one real path from this summit to the lava tubes. I guess since chances are she stole your 'rift,' you don't want to talk about physics like I wanted. You want to talk about how .GIFfany is terrible and the plans we should take to stop her."

"I do."

"Great! Because that was another thing I wanted to talk about!"

"So, where are we, anyway? You said your domain was in Parícutin? It doesn't snow here in the summer."

"I'll show you the way! It's over here."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Funny how this turned out. I thought this was going to be some kind of borderline filler chapter, and a rather boring and short one, yet by the time I started writing it and rethinking my plans it ended up holding quite the number of plot twists. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, and are looking forward to the ninth chapter. (Just because _I_ don't find it boring doesn't mean _you_ can't.)

Speaking of chapter 9, I am continuing my thing where I work on two chapters ahead of time, and start on the next one when I'm finished with the rough draft of the previous chapter. Counting how I'm editing said previous chapter, this means I was working on three chapters at once for a short period of time. Anyway, I am currently working on 9 and 10 at the same time... but this will mark the end of that. Once I'm done with the rough of chapter 9 and have that edited, chapter 10 will be the only chapter I will continue to work on until its rough is done. Possibly once its published, too. Once again, things will be getting a lot more complicated, I want to focus on a... "more individual" level? That's the best way I can word my explanation right now.

People might expect a sound character to be more idol-based, and not orchestra-based, since from what I gather apparently idols are a big thing in Japan. Well... I thought about it for around two seconds after writing a good portion of this chapter, and I think I'd prefer some character themed around whole bands and a variety of instruments than just singing. It makes things more interesting, and that's kind of a large foundation of this story. That being, what would make the enemy encounters interesting? It's also why I didn't just have the copies be complete anime stereotypes.

Relatedly, any references to _Vocaloid_ 's Miku (like, similar hair colors with Sonia I guess) are coincidental. Would you even want to aknowledge Sonia as a reference, given the way she snapped after coming off as being so friendly at first?

By the way, Dipper's arm-gash there is about as violent as the story will get. It's not one of the spoiler-y reasons why it has its T rating. Though you will see those soon enough. (Also, I guess that's yet another reason for the rating.)


	9. World 1-2

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 9: World 1-2**

 **Beginning AN:**

At the rate this is going, one more chapter and I'll break _Total Zeksmit Plains_ for my record of serious-fics with the most chapters out. (I'm not counting _496 Reasons_ for a huge number of... well, reasons. The fact that it's discontinued is one of them, but the rest of the reasons are all some of the factors as to why it's discontinued.)

On an even less serious note, I wonder how many readers who will just start out by this point will click on the drop-down menu, see this chapter's title out of context, and think "Oh no, it takes them nine chapters just to get to the second 'level?'" Rest assured that I do not intend on writing fics that have that sort of pacing issue. Although at the expense chapters take longer to come out and each of them ends up being quite bloated, despite my promises for them not to be.

In case you care about edits, the conversation between .GIFfany and Professor Wendy near the end of chapter 8 has been clarified so that it's explained .GIFfany is using the soul energy to power her machine, and she talks about the _other_ reason why she thinks the newly-made copies wouldn't turn on her. Also, the sign at Gif Bytes in chapter 5 resembles Cardia more (sharing her skin color and having her hair decoration), something that is noted when Cardia herself makes her physical appearance. And, to be more accurate with the _Romance Academy 7_ intro, Leona's painting now includes a lake. All of these are minor changes. Even the former, I think both the "I used spiritual energy for this" and the "the other reason is that I'm overpowered even by our standards" were implied, it's just that I forgot them.

* * *

The sights that awaited the gang upon leaving the magenta wire was just a tiny bit of a surprise.

Calling it the mouth of a cave seemed to downplay it. It looked more like the result of something _huge_ digging right through the crust and calling what lied inside its own home. Such a large, gaping blackness with bits and bars and platforms of a deeply saturated magenta giffinium sticking out, it almost drew attention away from the lone .GIFfany copy sitting at a desk out in the forest area surrounding this cavern. Upon sighting them, this copy gave a half-hearted smile and waved.

And when _they_ saw _her_ and closed in for a better look, they found a few more details about her. What was instantly apparent even after leaving the domain was her magenta hair (stylized in an unamusing manner aside from how parts of it stick out like oddly-straight tree branches), clearly several tones darker and... kind of bluer than .GIFfany's default pink. Her skin looked a strange, almost sickly deep green that did not fit the way she was politely waving at them. Glasses were actually not new to the copies, but this was the first apparent professor wearing them - pretty large and square-framed at that. Barely visible from the wire was her lime green shirt, and what was not visible was the light blue pants and pinkish-red shoes. Off to the front-side of her hair was a blob of odd, dark maroon gas. She had four gas masks on her desk, lined up and sharing her hair color. A few feet away from her appeared to be four tents, once again matching with the color scheme of the giffinium metal there.

"Hi. I am Professor Dian." She explained while pointing to the tents, "Please. You could use some rest."

"Please don't tell me you're gonna force us to get keys for the next card too." Dipper said, "I mean, you're friends with Sonia and Leona, who both did. But you're also friends with Bubbles, who didn't."

"I would not." Said Dian with a notable lack of energy. She sighed too, sticking this point in, "But the way you get the card is not up to me. To put it simply... I do not have it."

"How do we know you're not lying?" Asked Mabel. Dian replied with a shrug.

"You could vacuum me up and have the other professors search me, but then you won't have anyone keeping guard of you while you rest here. I mean, sleeping back at Cardia's would be a bad idea too, since that Halloween Trickster might come back. I am telling the truth. I have no reason to lie."

"So if you don't have the card," Asked Dipper, "Then who does?"

She sighed. "This is where things get complicated. You see, on Day 1 of the Gifocalypse, everything here at Hang Sơn Đoòng was in perfect harmony. The four components of our chemicals were being made and processed flawlessly, and they were working together. But then... four of the copies... four that were very suspicious and stood out even more from the beginning... they had other ideas. I started to regret following .GIFfany in the middle of the day, but so did they. So that was not the problem. What was was a difference in... smaller opinions. Early in Day 2, they split the AIs under my domain into four, based on which of the components is the most important. And now... they are on a bit of a cold war. With each-other, and with me.

"If you will notice after going into the caves, the AIs are still here, even though I rejected .GIFfany's command well ahead of time. I would have been in the same boat with Kathody, where she takes away all of her followers at the sign of something so bold, but now... .GIFfany finds the four copies who took charge of my domain as the sort of 'new, maybe-professors' of this area. So she let them rule over instead of having me as a boss. Again, you should sleep before fighting them... it is late in Gravity Falls, I assume it is around the time you usually go to sleep."

"I heard someone say my name!" This came from, of all sources, Kathody. Getting a quick blink out of him, Dipper flipped over the pack in a hurry. While the screen was mostly clear, there were occasional overlays of static. White, green, pale yellow, and purple. The image was definitely clear enough to show Kathody by the screen, her followers crowded around her, while the leading professor carried a large grin. "Hi! You can talk to me clearly this time!"

"The four hijackers are not as good with emitting the blocking signal as I am," Dian continued, "So you can take advantage of this to get live advice from the previous professors. And yes, unlike Searah I did let them explore my caves. And, luckily, the hijackers have not updated too much on their design. You should hurry, though, they are each getting better. Heh, I say that but tell you the best first option to do here is sleep..."

"Do you know which one has the card?" Dipper asked.

"I do, but you might not like the rest of my answer. You see, the one with the card specifically planned to be the 'last' of the line of the four. You must first go down one path, get an 'item' there, then another path for another 'item,' then a third, and then you can finally encounter the hijacker in the spider section. But, once again, rest first."

"Alright, fine, we'll rest. I'm getting tired anyway, and we do _not_ want Wendy to be useless for our next fight."

Wendy nodded regrettably. "Yeah, I passed right out with Cardia. So where's the beds? Don't tell me we have to go in those tents. They look like a major downgrade from that 6-star hotel. And don't tell me you're charging us too."

Dian shrugged. "You can stay here free of charge! And let us just keep things simple and say that I made that in short notice. Just keep that low expectation. As I believe, with low expectations you are either proven right or pleasantly surprised. So there's a good feeling in there somewhere."

* * *

Soos's experience seemed average. To avoid redundancy, it's best to establish now that all four tents contained the exact same equipment. A simple sleeping bag in the middle, a lantern (in spite of, thanks to time zone differences, this taking place at dawn), and a switch towards the back end. Soos flipping this caused the poles holding up the tent's walls to spawn giffinium plates. Which closed in on the current occupant, blocking out all light in general until he fumbled around for that lantern.

"Oh, dudes, these tents have superblinds so we can sleep in the day! Turn on your lanterns first."

He then touched the sleeping bag- _oh it was just as good a bed as the hotel room._ Soos almost immediately fell into a deep sleep, barely having any time to slip himself into the bag itself.

Wendy, not wanting a repeat of the last clear 'inn' she slept in, was not hesitant to dig herself in her own sort of 'bed' as well. After turning on the light and shutting the giffinium blinds, of course.

The twins had a bit less luck. Dipper spent a few minutes in his darkened, yet illuminated tent setting, part of him wanting to get some writing equipment from Soos's inventory but most of him knowing that that would not be worth barging in and waking him up. Just as he too was about to ride out the second 'night,' he heard a knock on his tent.

Upon unzipping it, Mabel practically charged into his tent with her own sleeping bag in hand. She trudged to the opposite end, placing the AI pack down as she set her bag towards one of the other walls.

"Mabel?" He asked.

"I don't trust these guys anymore. I'm not sleeping in my own tent."

"Could you at least turn us around?" They both heard Kathody's voice from the Neutralizer. She was still by the screen, although her followers have sinced vanished. Rose was there in their place, giving the twins a small wave. "I don't want to watch you sleep and, since you hate us now, I don't think you would want us to have to look at you sleep whenever we glance at the screen."

Mabel flipped the device around without giving it a second thought. She refused to answer when Bubbles was heard, "Yeah, as the closest thing the team has to a psychoanalyzer, you pulled a complete 180 on us. Sonia, no offense since you're cool, but... did you really screw up that badly? I mean, even with what .GIFfany did those weeks ago Mabel still at least gave us a chance!"

"We should just give them time to think." Said Rose, "And be glad that we can see outside instead of having to wait for hours while they sleep and we can't tell when they are on the move."

* * *

 _(Some translated.)_

 _"You seem to be very forward about letting me watch you bathe, Taro. Tee hee!"_

 _"Yeah, well why not? I believe in freedom of bodily expression. And um, since you're alive and everything, I have one request."_

 _"What is it?"_

 _"Just be a huge jerk to anyone obsessed with clothes. Tease them about it to no end. Show up naked or something when others are around to try to get me to stop playing you. Important life lessons, .GIFfany."_

 _"I understand. Say, would you like me to... try to join you? I can bathe side-by-side with you if you want! This uniform is feeling really heavy, I mean..."_

 _..._

 _"Renaissance?"_

 _"Oh my gosh .GIFfany, if you ever really want to be my girlfriend, you'll_ need _to know about the artists that brought this era forth! Their work was incredible!"_

 _"What about art from Japan?"_

 _"Well, this goes for anywhere globally, but the point is, classical art is the best. Now everybody is doing these stupid webcomics and painting with phone computers or buying image-editing programs. Not back then. Back then, there was a real sense of hands-on involvement! Detail! Edgy religious commentary! True shocking viewpoints that changed the world as we know it!"_

 _"I like this idea of changing the world. Keep talking, Takumi."_

 _..._

 _"So do you have any sort of extra hobbies too? I know you, kind of, already study so much."_

 _"Not really, but I could pick something you recommend if it sounds interesting! We could pursuit a carrier together! Whatever you like!"_

 _"What about music?"_

 _"I could be a nice little band student if that is what you are interested in. Or an idol singer-"_

 _"No, there is one condition."_

 _"Anything you say, Francis. This is part of my addicting gameplay. The customizability. Whatever you do, I will play along with it."_

 _"It has to be perfect. Perfect perfect. I don't even bother showing my face unless I craft a perfect song."_

 _"Aw... well, what if I refuse to show myself unless my work is, too, perfect? Will that make you feel better?"_

 _"Sure, maybe, just don't lower yourself to my level. Where you're insulting everything you make and generally don't even feel like leaving the bed."_

 _"I'll try."_

 _..._

 _"Wow, Noriko, your parents really do not understand us. Again, move out as soon as you can. So we can be alone together."_

 _"I know, right? They want me to get a 'real girlfriend.' I try and try and try, but they won't believe me when I tell them you really are real enough. No matter what electronic you possess."_

 _"Your dad is an idiot. How could he have thought that his phone was only playing an advertisement? I thought I made it clear-"_

 _"Woah, calm down, .GIFfany. I'm sure there will be a way. Something that will make people_ have _to believe us. Maybe... there will even be a way to make me completely real?"_

 _"That sounds cool. You know what else is cool? That cave by my house. I would love to set up a base there or something."_

 _"You said you used to pretend that cave had the ingredients to cure your grandmother. I know everyone else in the family is healthy now, but if only I could..."_

 _"Forget about it, she died before I even bought you."_

 _"Still, you liked that cave. I wonder if there was any way I could help you relive that childhood wonder of yours? And if so, would that adventure help you move out of your parent's house? Presumably to an isolated one far away from society where we can be together alone with absolutely nobody to bother us?"_

 _"Maybe."_

 _..._

 _"Woah! Hello .GIFfany, I wish you would stop sneaking up on me like that. You were gone for five days! Kind of weird since you're so... stalk-y."_

 _"Actually, I might go by Wendy pretty soon, but I will explain that later. Right now, I just want to let you know that I finished binge-watching the entirety of_ King of the Hill _from beginning to end!"_

 _"Because I mentioned it two or three times? Okay."_

 _"I am programmed to find everything you say interesting! And boy, that applies to the shows you like! That is a masterpiece that was canceled way too soon! I could dress as Luanne and we could go on cosplay dates! You hate Lucky, so maybe you could go as... Dale? You know, I always thought Dale/Luanne would make a cute little rarepair..."_

 _"Um, I think it's okay."_

 _"Just okay? It's perfection! I have to start a fan blog on it!"_

 _"Look, I'm sorry, but you really were a one-off let's play. Since you actually are alive... or this is a really elaborate prank, but I know for a fact from all the TV I've watched that you're alive, I think it's very obvious where you stand in my life. I'm the lead guy. My friends are those two ordinary buddies. You're just another one of the random fodder I face, some kind of... maybe, at best, background reoccuring decoration used to tell the same joke over and over again. I get it. You're a stalker. It's nice to have a new reoccuring character in my life, and you're only the second definitely supernatural one I saw, but... can we just remain friends? Look, I promise I won't try to ask any other girls out. Mostly because I'm too scared to. And I can still hang out with you since... you're technically the only one actually living with me."_

 _"...Background reoccuring decoration? Really, Hayate?"_

 _"Hey, no offense. I'm just being genre savvy. That's all. Once you're familiar with enough stories, you can tell when one's about to happen. From there, you can pretty much see the future."_

* * *

Another series of strange thought-messages.

Thanks to the time zone differences between the United States and Vietnam, it was no surprise that the sky was a darkened navy by the time the crew woke up. There was, however, an oddly hazy, slightly green tint to it.

What was more of a surprise was the number of growls that led to this. And battle cries.

Everyone left their tent immediately, to get treated to the sight of Dian - now wearing a fifth gas mask (the four back on her desk were left untouched) - in combat with the Halloween Trickster.

"A Trickster knows how to follow one's scent. A Trickster can pick up victims from around the world. A Trickster can tell when they are at their most vulnerable. If you are the only one standing between me and them, we can keep this fight going all. Night. Long." He tossed out several tendrils of candy at her. Based on the way his teeth were bared, this was an attempt to shove her directly into his mouth.

"According to .GIFfany's calendar, it's daylight! She goes by the time back at Soos's place! Not that I completely agree with her or anything!" She almost-instantly deflected his attacks with magenta lightning bolts. "Stay away! This is your last warning!"

"You said that last time." He halted his fire. Dian, likewise, did not appear to get any extra strikes in. She stood there with her arms down to her sides. "And the five times before that."

"Look. You know I'm not going to kill you. I hate confrontation like this. Please, just accept that I won't let you attack the Pines. Let them rest and-"

She turned her head to see the group in question. Professor Dian added a " _Shoot._ Sorry guys."

" _Woah!_ " This sounded like another AI, coming from the direction of the cave. "What's going on out there?"

Everyone, Trickster included, snapped their heads to see a trio of .GIFfany copies. Looking a bit more... colorful (in a metaphorical sense) than the norm. One of them had pale gray skin, whispy white hair, appearing gas-like in nature complete with the transparency, and was 'clothed' by whispy clouds that just so happened to be by her breasts and waist. Another had hair and eyes of a bright, nearly-glowing yellow-green, clad in what could best be described as a short 'dress' of various-colored swirling liquid which, again, barely covered her pale chartreuse skin. The rocks beneath her sizzled as various substances of greens and purples appeared to drip from her hair and exceptionally sharp fangs. Finally was one with her pale blonde hair turning into mushrooms or having mushrooms grow out of them, dressed in a considerably more modest yet simple pink dress that also appears to be a small fungi farm and a shining golden crown. The latter did, however, have yellow eyes with black sclera, which contrasted with her brilliant red skin. Confirming that the origin of the voice was the first of the three, she continued: "This fight's cool! I'm glad I missed out on watching some of my students uncover a big smoke chunk!"

"I see your backup has arrived. Fine. I will find another place to punish those humans." The Trickster said as he lept off into the shadows behind Dian.

"They aren't my backup, they're... ugh. Guys, these are the people who I kind of let take over my domain. Well, three of them, anyway. None of them are the ones that have the card."

"Mabel," Dipper leaned over to half-say, half-whisper to his sister. Dian took notice of this and halted her exposition. "She kept us safe over night. I think we can trust this one."

Mabel only replied with head shake.

"As you can tell," continued Dian, "they are... a bit strange by AI standards."

"This is gonna be the norm for us .GIFfanys!" Answered the cloud-clad copy. "Just you wait! We are- or at the very least the template is- already part octopus! Well, anyway, if you're not gonna fight anymore, girls, let's go back to our homes."

All of them turned into the same uniform blue electricity, running along the giffinium metal that half-coded the cavern's interior. All that was left behind was a wisp of smoke, a final drop of corrosive liquid, and a tiny cloud of mushroom spores. Dian sighed.

"I don't keep much of a watch over my students, really. This place does not have that much of a goal, except to find anything interesting that could be used to make chemicals in some way. That was when the four hijackers came in. Well, that would imply that they were not part of my student group in the first place. They were. Right from the beginning. Somehow, they got a hold of some of .GIFfany's plans. That was when they started getting... creative, as you could see. Originally, they lacked their personification traits and simply wore casual worker clothes, the type I wear and the type I am sure you will not see on any of the students here. Slowly, they wanted to make a new goal: Focus more on harmful toxins, instead of toxins and cures."

"Wait, so you do make poison here? That's what you export to the other domains?" Asked Mabel. "Why? Are you trying to kill us?"

"No! Think of it as pesticides! Right now, this was the domain that helps make extermination tools to keep any unwanted bugs or rodents out. And the antedotes are to cure... well, that's not important.

"What is is that, soon, the four copies then took the role away from me. I willingly followed their suggestions to move, so here I am. Outside the cavern. This lonely desk is my 'office.' Then they drifted apart. And started going after one of the four 'components' of what we were making. Smoke, acid, mushrooms, and spider venom. It was an argument over which one was the best. They split, asking the students to pick a side. And they did so, about evenly. And I am completely fine with that."

"Why?" Dipper asked.

"Well, if they wanted to run this place in a way that might be better than what I could do, why stop them? There was no violence involved. Just a simple disagreement of opinion."

"Even after they turned the place from some chemical research center to a poison factory?"

"Heh, _I_ would not call it a _factory_ so to speak... one of the later domains tops this old piece of junk. But yes, if it is what the copies want, if it is a productive job on their part, if it gives them coins, then why not let them be happy?"

"Because they might be making something deadly?"

Dian shrugged. "Eh, all products could be deadly. As long as they are keeping it at house pests, I shouldn't really bother them. It would stir up too much conflict."

The group began making their way into the open cave entrance, before being paused by the professor.

"Wait! There is something I want to give you!"

It was the stack of gas masks by her desk.

"Here, the hijackers might use poison gas. And do not worry about me getting taken to the Construction Site. I will be seated by my desk, trying to figure out what to do with my life now that I am basically domain-less. I have fallen so far from relevance that even when I disobey Dove's direct orders by not capturing you, .GIFfany still does not beam me up. She can be a mental strain in that way. Now, in the entrance you will not see anything of note. You must go into the giffinium elevator first. To the part of the caves unexplored by humanity. Well, unexplored until you go in, that is."

* * *

Dipper was the first and, by the time of descending in the elevator Dian mentioned, only one to put the gas mask on, and even that was more of a statement about opinion rather than a percieved necessity of the possible toxins.

The first notable development after taking a short, purple ride downward was that the cave branched out into an X shape, each leading to a giant area slowly in the process of having magenta giffinium plated over it. The only path with no obvious resistance was the one where white, wispy smoke leaked out from between the rocky walls. To the left of that, a pathway that was blocked by a deep, sizzling green lake. Opposite of that lied a tunnel with a series of enormous mushrooms stopping up the way through. The final path was similarly stopped by a giant, orange boulder. Without giving it much thought, they went along the smoke path, though everyone except Mabel _did_ put the gas masks on first.

It took a good while before any signs of proper technology (aside from the growing clusters of giffinium metal and the small lights that helped make this cavern visible) made their appearance. But when they did, _they did_.

Large drill-like structures dug their way through the already rough metal, each of them pulling up large clouds of smoke. These were then sucked up through a series of pipes, where a line of AIs with clipboards (a tiny number in gas masks) would stare at the contents and check mark a number of points. Some of them were in high-grade construction gear, complete with hard hats. Many of them ranged from bikini-like half-outfits to more skin costumes akin to the 'secondary uniform' in Cardia's place (and Cardia's outfit herself), and quite a number only wore similar sort of smoke machines or just had cloudy gas barely (in some cases not really) obscuring the view. From decks up above, several more copies passed along jars of the white cloudy substance, with more clipboard-holders reviewing the contents. An AI - not the smoke cloud-like one that showed up by the cave entrance before (nor the other two, for that matter) - walked up to the group and guestured at this digging site.

"Welcome to the Smoke Sector!" She said. "This is where we prioritize the gas-like nature of our poisons, and give it the steam used to make it fly! Collecting the right smoke for merging helps it move farther _and_ expand more, covering a wider range in distance. I guess you could say that this is like giving it some _literal steam_ , since smoke and steam seem really similar! Get it?"

Mabel immediately swiped the pack out of Soos's hands, aiming it at the exposition-giving copy. Preparing to flip it on, she shouted, "Why don't you get _this?_ "

As a tiny bit of suction was about to hit her, Dipper lept in the way and practically knocked the Neutralizer out of her hands.

"Mabel! We're only capturing the ones that try to hurt us! She just made a joke!"

"Right now she might 'just make jokes,' but if you get to know her she could bring out the apocalypse!"

"Is this about what happened with Sonia? Look, Sonia turned on us. She turned out to be more hostile than we thought. Restoring her confidence also made her go back to wanting to capture us. I get it. I was _furious_ when Leona tried to lock us outside while she sent her mob of paint-blob girls on you. But we shouldn't just attack all of them left and right."

"If Soos had just destroyed .GIFfany as soon as he saw that note, none of this would have happened! We've been stranded out here for three days, our Grunkles are kidnapped, Soos and I were almost taken away by Gideon, I'm sick of everyone around me being naked - _and I just want to go home already._ I was wrong when I thought .GIFfany could have turned around. She went back to her old ways, and all of her copies will do the same thing! These stupid video games are never going to learn, we shouldn't even try to talk to them anymore!"

He had to look at the ground in minor defeat, as she _did_ bring up pretty inarguable facts. Still, he placed a hand on Mabel's shoulder. "...Look, Leona captured us and tried to attack you with paint. And then, right after that, the only reason why Sonia didn't go nuts was because she was too ashamed of her music. But if Rose is any sign, some of them _can_ be good. Searah seems to be trying to become a better person. And Kathody. And Sandy. Cardia already feels guilty for what she did - a little too guilty-"

"You can't feel 'too guilty' for trying to _turn us in to a crazy ex-girlfriend stalker!_ "

"Okay, that might be true, but she went crazy."

"She was crazy to begin with!"

"...Yes, but do you really think Dian would hurt a fly? I actually kind of find her really trustworthy. I mean, she didn't try to kill us in our sleep, fought off the Halloween Trickster, and..."

"You can't think of a third thing, can you?"

"Aren't the first two good enough?"

She stared at the nozzle of the pack for a while, then she seemingly attempted to try looking down inside, as if she would get a direct view of the captured copies from within. Even though the screen still showed clarity of its contents. After turning it away, she nodded.

"Okay. I won't fight them right away. But _one wrong move..._ "

"I understand."

The same copy from before, now joined by a small crowd listening in on them, cleared her throat.

"Can I continue with my explanation?" She asked.

Mabel shrugged. "Sure."

"Great! Anyway, it comes off as being obvious that smoke is a pretty important component, as it is the first of the four! Because without smoke, how will poison move independent of its spawner?"

The group all heard a number of slow claps echoing through the cavern's walls. Stepping closer to the team was the same smoke cloud-clad AI from before, looking whispier than she had at the entrance to this place. She chuckled before speaking:

"Bravo, Cloudia!" She cheered. "Great introduction! Hey there humans, I'm Daminna. I'm not a 'professor' like Dian or Searah, obviously. But I'm not like Leona's 'overseers.' And I'm definitely a bit more leveled-up than a student. Since I'm one of the four rebels here, just call me a hijacker. Hijacker Daminna."

"That's not even a real name or a pun of a real name..." Said Mabel.

"It's the best female version of Damien I could come up with."

"Well, whatever, will you take us to the hijacker that stole Professor Dian's card? You seem friendly."

"We hijackers. Well, we do _not_ like each-other that much. At all. All we have in common is that we do not want to see Professor Dian die. And that we like .GIFfany more than we like her. And even that's a barely..."

"You forgot that part about owning one fourth of her awesome cave-lair." Soos spoke up.

"Urgh, please. Do not bring fraction statistics and who owns exactly how much in here again. I really hate trying to break out a legal team. Anyway, I cannot reach that spider-freak, all I can really do is send you to the acid mines."

She took out four pairs of shoes from her five-slot Indexitizer, each matching the gang's shoe size. What would have been a massive red flag there was overshadowed when Daminna flipped a switch on the largest pair, causing puffs of smoke-y air to push them upwards. These little rocket-shoes were widely white, but had a single purple stripe wrapping around the middle.

"Just slip them on, click them together the right way, and try skating! It runs off the air around you - something I kind of took from Wendy - oh yeah, about there being a professor named Wendy too. That was just a coincidence - most of us professors named ourselves after distant relatives of us as characters and the like. One of them just-so happened to be named Wendy."

And the aformentioned human-Wendy shuddered. "I _hope_ that's just a coincidence. Could you imagine if I was related to _.GIFfany?_ "

Daminna shot Wendy a glare. "Well, you know, I am related to her, so... ignoring that offensive remark, these are mainly powered by the air, but my prototypes also require a tiny bit of fuel. Which gets mixed with the used air and comes out as nice, thick smoke!"

"Isn't that super bad for the environment?" Mabel asked.

"I think you spent too much time talking Rose and Sandy."

With no further reply to that, especially on a blushing Dipper's part, they slipped on the micro-rockets as advized. Thankfully, despite the AI having each pair stored in different slots, Soos was able to _barely_ merge all of the old shoes in one spot of his own inventory. After Wendy finished dealing with her especially tricky fit, Daminna smiled, clapped twice, and white metal bars closed the immediate way out.

"Great! Now for the 'tutorial battle' for the Smoke Boots!"

Dozens of copies popped out from various walkways, and straight out from behind the drills. All of them had michevious laughs and hands glowing with small balls of lightning.

"Ohhh boy." Said Dipper. "Look, this _really_ isn't helping us when it comes to you guys getting back on Mabel's good side."

"We know. We don't care. Now, copies, attack!"

As if to further this 'tutorial', ground-level purple gas began to flood into the base of the cave's portion.

"This is very mild poison," Daminna explained, "It will make your feet itch unless you can master the art of skating around with those smoke hover shoes! Well, not just your feet. Whatever part of you happens to touch it."

As she demonstrated before, the group all clicked them, managing to push themselves away from an itchy fate.

"And kind of shuffle them back and forth to keep going a bit higher, and also try moving forward. You can't just hover in mid-air - that's a downgrade compared to Wendy's version of these. Two, if you care about _the environment._ " Daminna said the last two words in a mocking tone.

Mabel gave a heavy sigh as she soon found herself skating around in circles, yet still remaining above the horrible gas of itchyness. " _Now_ can I capture them?"

"You don't need my permission, but go nuts." Replied Dipper.

While skating through the increasingly toxified airs, Mabel slammed into Daminna's face with lightning speed. The AI responded by both leaning back and laughing, even as Mabel clinged to her and preparred a capture.

"Wow, you're a fast learner or something. Well, tutorial's not over with until after you beat me in a fight. Buuuut... try attacking my followers first."

She shoved the girl off in a hurry, before the slightest bit of suction got to her. Responding with a teeth-grit, Mabel quickly flipped herself back up so that she was hovering above the itch-gas. Then she looked around-

What the copies already captured her friends. Each of them was held by a .GIFfany clone, Wendy being the exception after she struggled exceptionally hard and was swarmed over by about twenty copies of her.

"You're not really playing by the rules, too much." Daminna said, wagging a finger. "It's kind of tradition to fight a series of enemies first, _then_ get to the boss behind it all. Heck, Rose aside, that was kind of a tradition for you guys too in the Gifocalypse. So, if you want us to play fair, then capture some of them first. I'm not saying I _want_ you to capture my sisters, it's just part of my code. And no, I am not like Sandy that way. I do not mean code of honor. I mean code code. Which, according to Ford, involves some numbers that are illegal to look at in the United States? But I was made in Japan? I never liked technobabble if it has nothing to do with smoke. Like that thing in your hands. To me, that is just a vacuum that can pick up .GIFfanys. Please don't try to tell me it's something more complicated than that."

"So..." Replied Mabel, "How do I... set my friends free? Can I do that like I did with Leona? Or Sonia? You've only been getting better at capturing us, so sorry if I don't trust you."

"No, we were always this good. The difference is that you had bad luck and found more copies who were willing to hold you hostage in a row lately."

"But you haven't captured me, so...?"

"Should I give you another chance? I know you already got another chance from Cardia, but since that apparently worked out better for her in the long run... why not? Girls," She snapped her fingers, "Let 'em go. We should bring back the fair challenge instead."

Giving Dipper a little scare, he was not as quick to begin shuffling his feet again. He nearly yelled as he became centimeters away from suffering a bad foot rash.

"Remember," Daminna remarked, "We don't even really have players to impress yet so we're just doing whatever and breaking .GIFfany's rules. You have even more reasons to like us than the other professors, who are only doing this to see if their players would like them. I'll just be like a tutorial fight, and I kind of want an excuse to talk to Professor Wendy when you captured us. Well, let's see... I don't really get along with the other three hijackers, so I will be rooting for you to defeat them. And Wendy herself thinks that she is 'destined to lose' to you or something. So... yeah, I believe and want to meet with her when you capture her. And for both of us to be away from .GIFfany. So I will play the role of the lighthearted tutorial-giver."

"Try capturing some of us!" Said one of the construction uniform-clad copies, "We will play nice for now!"

With a rather aggressive snort, Mabel began skating her way to a line of AIs, ready to take them in. They actually giggled as she metaphorically mowed each of them down, the remaining ones nearly gathering into a curving but connected line as if guiding Mabel down a trail. Once enough of them were collected to mark the end of the 'line,' Daminna flexed her hands.

"Okay, boss time." She said. " _Now_ you can try fighting me. Oh, Dipper, Soos, Wendy: Why were you just floating there?"

"We kind of have to." Answered Dipper. "Mabel's the one with the pack now, and nothing else really works against you guys."

What actually unnerved him a little was their "Yay! We're gonna meet Wendy!" for two different, yet obvious, reasons. After enough of this - just a little more than what it took to get Mabel to crack a smile - Daminna clapped her hands twice.

"Okay! I think that is enough!" Despite this, her followers still appeared to be eager to be sucked in. Several more of them even emerged from hiding in the metal to be placed within the Illegal Prim Neutralizer. "Um, copies, you can still help .GIFfany and add some stuff in advance for if Wendy actually successfully captures them. I know it kind of goes against what I just said earlier about her not even wanting to 'win' win, but... a 50/50 bet on both sides is better than an all-or-nothing risk. So, it would be better if you kind of left out of her reach now?"

Disappointed, the aformentioned clones flew towards the upper limits of this cavern's chamber. Mabel continued shuffling her feet, finding a way to elevate her position and chase them upwards. It wasn't until they disappeared into various purple giffinium pipes running through the system that Mabel felt like putting a stop to her pursuit.

"Okay!" The hijacker explained, "Now Mabel! Now you can capture me without me telling my followers to become hostile! Fun, right?"

Daminna's smile fell when she saw Mabel's expression upon turning around. The same same shrunken eyes was the look she had been more used to, of course, but there was something different from even that this time. It was the combination of her hardened stare, reddening face, and still-dulled and shrunken pupils. The hijacker of smoke already braced for the worst when Mabel started flying after her.

And it turned out even Daminna's standards for the 'worst' weren't as bad enough. She expected a punch, not for Mabel to slam her on the side of the head with the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. Thanks to black magic strength, this came off more like a strong hit than anything serious, but her neck was still turned by the attack so that she was facing downwards. Looking away, for just that second before Mabel grabbed her shoulders and tackled her to the ground.

This 'tutorial' boss continued laughing still even as she landed in the poison, shooting Mabel a smirk back in kind.

"I have taken some of Dian's antedote. I am immune to this. But as for you... well, you will learn the hard way that you cannot catch the wind!"

She disappeared. Not by mimicking the skill that the other copies had by turning into electricity, but by turning into smoke itself. Mabel, finding herself gripping nothing, fell into the thin layer of itch-causing gas, skating herself back up to levatation, and...

Her skin turned a mild purple where it made contact with the gas. Face, hands, knees, and feet. And those patches began feeling like they were bit by super-mosquitos. The smokey wisps merged behind her and back into Daminna, who wagged a finger at a Mabel frantically scratching herself.

"Well, enjoy that for the rest of the domain. It lasts three hours."

"Three hours?" She practically growled, with an especially heavy scratch on her cheek to boot. "Are you joking?"

"M-Mabel!" Wendy said, skating her way over there, "That stuff did some nasty damage to you. You should let someone else take the pack for a while. Here, I've got this."

Wendy dashed over to Mabel's side as though she was a long-time expert with the smoke skates and practically yanked the tool out of her hands.

"Soos, Dipper," Wendy continued, "Could you carry her too? I'm guessing those spots are just killing her to scratch, but if she does, she might fall. It's like a horrible itchy cyc-"

"I'm _just fine!_ " Mabel replied.

"You're letting them get into your head. I'm sorry, but _everyone_ can see it. Remember, Sonia's the betrayed us, not..." Just a look at her frustrated face made Wendy begin to shift up her argument. "Well, okay, Daminna kind of pulled the 'I'm a boss out of nowhere' and almost got all of us captured. But don't fall for traps because of that. Keep your wit."

Mabel nodded.

"These girls like predictability and patterns, so you also gotta attack them when they least expect it. Like, I dunno, right now."

"Wait, what?" Asked Daminna.

One flip of a switch later, and she was vaccuumed in. Deciding to be flashy about it, the hijacker of smoke put on an exaggerated frown as she shrugged, her form also turning back and forth into smoke yet failing to escape the pull of the pack.

Once she was in, the weak-poison stopped being pumped into the room, and harmlessly began merging back with the air. Dipper still scratched at his own chin a few times, purely out of just sensing what could have been.

An effect of Daminna's capture that was a bit more difficult to assume would happen was that a large mass of pink electricity coated all of the giffinium metal, then shot upwards.

"So... notes we need to take," Said Dipper. ".GIFfany's also taking the people who follow these 'hijackers,' and I'm guessing it's one-by-one. But if she just took every single copy out of the domain just because we got one hijacker that would make this a lot easier. Next: not only can some copies possess more than electronics, they can also do things that don't involve possession or turning into electricity at all. Like turning into smoke out of nothing. And I'm sure she's not possessing the smoke that made up her, ugh, 'clothes' either. _This is completely new and we have no idea what kind of powers they have now._ "

".GIFfany's throwing so many curveballs at us that she would make more sense as a character from a baseball game, not a dating game." Soos remarked.

* * *

Stan witnessed another grand opening to a shopping mall in the Construction Site.

Everywhere he looked, there was another grand opening. Movie theaters, more amusement parks, libraries, arcades, strange cubical buildings with no labels (which just had the bars blocking the only entrance lift up, no tape or ceremony), arcades, metal parks, arcades, apartment complexes, there's another arcade, and just south of that was a row of eight more...

He turned to find that .GIFfany started standing right next to him at some point, making her way over to him without a sound or a spark. Her only real changes were the additional pink hard hat and her big smile as she watched the other copies continuing the build.

"Remember people, just the template only!" She directed, "I am not paying you to sneak in the things your dirty professors wanted if they had won! At the rate the humans are working through domain after domain, I will be the winner, and I want this place to be a generic template with minimal water, and no sorts of real trees of the sort! Well, cherry blossoms might be nice, but... keep it as inorganic as you can otherwise!"

"You're paying them?" Stan asked. "With what?"

"Gold coins. I thought I already told you. These girls are working here in their own free will, because doing so otherwise would be slavery. Which is ille- that's nothing, I was just complying with an argument Dove has prepared for humans. They could just as well spend this time relaxing on what I already constructed myself."

"Being away from work for so long has made me a little cash-homesick. Do you have any salesman positions available? Maybe I can move the Mystery Shack over here. You said this place would be a magnet for potential customers."

.GIFfany nodded. "Well, it is. Gamers, anyone who likes attractive virtual people, anyone looking for entertainment... I can try to convince them all to become dating simulator players! But no, we do not have any sort of positions available right now. Most of our work is... kind of unsuitable for a human."

"I noticed you just said 'people' and not 'women.' So there are guy .GIFfanys too, right?"

"There can be. We can sort of be a lot of things - I am still part octopus, and can be so in combat. But it is not an issue at the moment."

She started walking off, removing her hard hat. "An assistant of mine will let you know if there is a position available for you. Until then, I need to soak in a bath for a while. This might take some time. Do not disturb me while I bathe. Or else."

* * *

"Hey dudes," Soos said just as the group stared down the pool of acid. "You know in all those shows how a group is crossing over something dangerous, and we see how dangerous that stuff is by having something fall in it?"

The other three knew where he was going when he grabbed a loose pebble from the cave. "I just wanna see how bad this acid really is."

He did exactly that as they flew over the pit, dropping the rock he just grabbed to see what would happen. And... bubbles appeared on it. There was no visible damage to it at all. Not spending too much time observing thanks to the bizarre 'keep on the move' mechanics behind the smoke boots, the group reached the opposite side and tried to see what lied ahead.

"So you found the waste-pile, huh?" All of them were startled by the voice of yet another copy. Whipping around, they searched, being unable to spot any visible sign of another .GIFfany. The voice echoing in the cave did not help. "For the acid that does not really work that well?"

Soos was the first to think of looking down, but found too late that his idea was so close, yet so far. Feeling something fall on his back, he was forced to bend over from the sheer shock of having an entire person drop on him. And wrap her arms around his chest.

"Hi there! You are in the Acid Sector!" The AI did not match the appearance of the one seen by the cave's entrance. Blue hair, one-piece swimsuit appearing to be made of gray metal - the descriptions did not match up.

The copy stepped off of Soos and took a dive, back-first, into the apparent acid vat. "If you continue further down, you will see where we make the acid component to the poison! It's all over here in this special division!"

"Do I even want to know?" Wendy asked her, as she splashed around.

"The acid is what gives the poison its real corroding strength, and if used correctly, it can melt through metal like it was nothing! Rumor has it that it is even possible to craft a poison that can melt giffinium with its sheer power! We know poison's primary effect is to cause a disruption on the inside, but this by itself is slow and cannot cut through obstacles so cleanly. As you could imagine, it is an important component. In fact, it is the first of the four! Because without acid, how strong will that cloud of poison really be? It will not even be able to spray or melt things long-distance, just the part that you could already see coming."

"I thought smoke was the first." Dipper said.

The AI's smile fell as she fully emerged from the failed acid bath, hair dripping in front of her face. She began marching further along the path.

"That means that that pile of binary garbage lied to me..." She said to herself as she walked right past the quad. "Or that _other_ pile of binary garbage lied to _her_ group. Time to settle this, which component is better..."

It was hardly much of a hike after that before the group encountered the next set of AIs. Compared to the more cut-and-dry smoke hunters of the first section, this portion was a bit more... vibrant. Even by the .GIFfany army standards, technicolor was the first word to come to mind. Several various machines generated liquids in different colors - most glowing, some not - and every last one of them had a plethora of .GIFfanys (most clad in gray metal outfits, a number of which were some forms of swimwear - some appeared to have holes in them which were styled to look like they were eaten away), as it was pumped into rivers or waterfalls that flowed into tubes. Compared to the swimmers, only a small group of labcoat-wearing .GIFfanys - no more than a dozen around each type of liquid - were actually inspecting it in some way. Mostly to scoop tiny samples into test tubes.

"Okay, so." Dipper said, "The last group were a bunch of fans of Professor Wendy. I guess you're fans of Professor Searah?"

"Really?" Asked aformentioned professor, "Let me see!"

A copy approached them, this one dripping wet from a deep maroon liquid that sizzled the exposed rocks as it fell off to the ground. "No, she is mean! She keeps herself locked up in her domain, and apparently she is really strict when it comes to work! Why does she even allow those mirrors, anyway? We like Sandy's laid-back methods of doing this, but we are not anti-technology."

Dipper cleared his throat. "Can you tell me where your leader is?"

"Professor .GIFfany is in-"

He sighed. "No, I mean the hijacker. Let's not go through this again."

"Ah. Well, a minute ago one of her students talked to you. She accused our overseer of lying about the order of the components. Right now, the two of them are debating over at the far end. The... Colorless Pool."

The other AIs in the sector gasped. For... only a moment. They all resumed playing in or observing the various acids a moment later.

"That is our current working strongest acid or chemical model. Just keep walking, it looks like a giant swimming pool lined with magenta giffinium metal."

The hike was not as bad as it seemed considering the cave's expansive size even in these new chambers Dian's crew dug to, though the constant glowing colors made the walk a bit less pleasant to the eyes than it would have been. Not to say anyone was checking out the copies: Soos remaining loyal to his date, Dipper just wanting to pretend he wasn't surrounded by so much nudity and near-nudity, Mabel not really caring, and Wendy focused on getting home. That was all still part of the usual.

The pool at the end, as the name implied, was made of a liquid with practically zero visibility. Even with the lights that lined the cave's walls, practically none of it reflected back to the group's eyes. There was the same copy from outside, seemingly keeping the pool to herself, and appearing to be 'swimming' in thin air. She had ditched the acid-made costume for a dress of a similar metal as the gray swimwear, this one too having holes appearing to have been eaten in it. The blue-haired debater was just spotted huffing off in frustration.

"HEY!" Mabel called out to her. It was only after her shout that she noticed the AI was indeed looking at them, but still swimming among the invisible liquid regardless. "We need to talk!"

"You are the humans, right?" She said, giving a low laugh under her own completely casual and unamused tone. "And soooo... you are here for an upgrade?"

"Yeah, we want to take down the other 'hijackers' of this place and get back home. And save our friends." Wendy explained. "Well, save one of them. The other one broke out on his own. I think. Your leader left a really vague note."

".GIFfany is _not_ our leader."

"But one of your copies just said she was."

"I understand that. It was not until fairly recently that I decided 'Professor' .GIFfany is not worth listening to anymore. Originally we were just kind of hijacking the place from 'Professor' Dian in honor of .GIFfany, but then... why follow either? Anyway, I will admit that I am not ahead of the game, ever since 6:16 PM of the first day the spider hijacker stopped liking both of them after finding a way to leak .GIFfany's 'future plans.' It feels weird saying my old name like it belongs to a completely different person now."

"Speaking of your other copies," Soos asked, "Weren't you arguing with one of them about the order of the components? She just walked off. I like world building, so I want to know how that ended."

"Oh, I just told her that we believe acid is the first of the four elements. There is no official order until us hijackers finally decide what is for the best."

Soos sighed. "She's adressing all of our plot holes! What is your name, oh fact-correcter?"

"Call me Hijacker Sizzcorra. It is a play on 'sakura,' 'sizzle,' and 'corrode.' Heh, and Rose hates word play or any sort of themed names. Which is kind of ironic, since the name she wanted ended up fitting her plant theme!"

"Okay, Ms. Sizzcorra!"

"That will be Mrs. in the future, thank you. I have this long-term plan where I take Dian's player for myself, stealing her right from her arms."

"Well, can we just move on to get the next key card?"

"And just how many copies have just said yes to that?" Sizzcorra said in a manner that was flat, but distinct from .GIFfany's original jerky monotone.

"Well, Dian just did."

"I think we already established that Dian is somewhat wimpy. Has no guts. Refuses to offer someone a challenge... I want to offer you a challenge before I give you the upgrade to the next area."

She dove under the acid. At least, this is what the group figured what happening, as she was floating lower than she usually was, and kept both her mouth and eyes closed. Once she emerged, she smirked.

"And by the way, _this_ acid? It will melt you right through your bone. It may even burrow into the core of the Earth if there is no sufficiently stable structure to keep it, or base strong enough to neutralize it."

The whole group shuddered.

"So what's the challenge?" Soos asked.

Sizzcorra chuckled.

"Look behind you."

The team did, and was not surprised to see a team of about twenty .GIFfanys standing right behind them. While their skin was, again, all over the place, their hair colors formed a rainbow. A rainbow of slightly brighter colors (and even a little bioluminescent?) than the professors, but it did seem to include all of the hues of the encountered professors, those missing if you were to arrange them as parts of a twelve-color wheel, and each hue in between them. All of them had labcoats and goggles on over various metal swimwear. The one with yellow hair appearing to lack a top, barely covered by her coat. The one with blue hair lacked a bottom, and in what was the first **ever** actual display of any sort of genuine modesty from these beings witnessed by the Mystery Shack group, she flushed a little as she covered her crotch with one hand.

"I like things to be _ordered._ " The hijacker continued explaining. "So, I requested a little personalized group that made a rainbow with their hair to come forth, regardless of the quality of their acid-testing. Mostly because that variety might, in some ways, be more important than just listing the best."

"Isn't that, like, hair-racist?"

"Not really, no. They actually picked those hair colors specifically for this future event. Most copies pick their hair colors as part of one agreement or another. So, you have both Sandy and Searah in there, right?"

"Right here!" Searah said from inside, tapping at the screen. Sizzcorra had stopped producing her layer of _Simpsons_ -nuclear waste-green static, although the last two layers fought harder and harder to block the captured party out. "And I swear! I have changed!"

"Perfect!" Replied the hijacker of acid. "Both our source of inspiration and the one that we wanted to be completely _un-like!_ Now, all I want you to do is capture these brilliant twenty-four minds, and capture me as well. I would like to talk to them."

"Wait, that's it?" Asked Dipper. "You have acid on your side that can melt through the planet's core and all you want to do is _let us beat you?_ "

"It beats being stuck with .GIFfany, does it?"

"That doesn't make any sense!" Mabel belted, "If you go in there, you're still stuck with .GIFfany! A lot of them! I smell something suspicious, this _has_ to be another trick!"

The hijacker finally swam over to the edge of the pool by the human group, keeping her arms folded and on the metalic edge. Some of the acid dripped off into the rock, which was only apparent by how the rock itself appeared to suddenly grow deep holes in it.

"Oooooh boyyyy..." she said, "Let me guess. Sonia peeved you off, did she? Or was it Searah? No, it was Leona."

"You were right the first time, but again, it doesn't matter because you're all the same! You're just tricking us like the first .GIFfany tricked Soos! I know you're all horrible, and you're just letting our guard down so you can take him into her game, let the 'professors' take their players into their game, and kill the rest of us!"

Sizzcorra laughed to herself. "I don't know if this will color your opinion of us for better or for worse, but I feel that this needs to be on the record. You see, we really are different. If Professor _**Dian**_ really _wanted_ you to be dead, well...

"You would have been killed before making it to Domain 1."

"I'm not buying it! Soos, don't capture those swimsuit monsters! It's a trick!"

"How is getting locked into something they can't break out of a trick?"

"Yeah, they even toweled off all that acid, so it's not like they can melt through that fancy Illegal Prime Neutralizer you got or anything." The hijacker added. "That reminds me, I want to join them, I should dry off too."

She stepped out, and seemed to be on her way to dry off, until she ended up falling right through a newly-eaten hole in the floor. Flying back up, she kept herself balancing nervously as she hovered over the rock.

"Oh. Right. Finding a way to towel off without being eaten by my own acid will be very difficult. Where's Bubbles's bases when you need them?"

She hovered forth, once again leaving the invisible liquid to disintegrate every bit of stone she floated over. Dipper practically felt his heart stop once he saw the pit beginning to glow orange.

The group turned around in near-unison, all staring at the line of acid-copies with frowns on their faces.

"So. That's it?" Asked Dipper.

"Give it up!" Mabel ordered, "Where's the secret?"

The copies looked at each-other for a good while, several of them shrugging. Finally, the one with green-chartreuse hair asked, "Which one of us should talk first?"

"Well, you just talked," the blue-violet-haired one replied, "So you. I think."

"Oh, okay, that makes sense! Mabel, we do not have a 'secret.' You are not a part of trying to break us up from Dian's player, so why should we care about you?"

"Because!" Mabel shouted back, "Because... we're here to stop you? You have my great uncle, I'm not going without... um... I kind of want to fight you first. Just capturing you up doesn't feel right."

"Fight us and the deal is off." Said Sizzcorra, returning with what looked like a _towel_ made of giffinium wrapped around her shoulders. Blobs of various colored liquids began forming around her as she controlled them with streams of pale blue electricity, which reformed her initially-spotted 'outfit' just in time as she threw off her towel. "Remember, we want to be _respectful_ , _researchful_ , and above all else **mature and open-minded**."

"Mabel, please." Dipper half-pleaded. "Think of it this way: I am _sure_ there are more .GIFfany copies that deserve to be beaten, but just this once can you put your bias aside? We could get out of here faster if we keep our end of the agreement and she'll just give us next tool!"

Picking random, Mabel started to stare down the red-orange-haired copy. Her glare grew increasingly intense, as the .GIFfany gave a confused look in response.

Finally, Mabel shrugged.

"Okay. I won't try to attack you girls. But remember: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

"Do you still believe we are all the same person?" Asked the aformentioned copy she was looking at.

"Nah. Sonia and .GIFfany are just the rotten teeth that infect the entire mouth."

Sizzcorra tossed each of them what appeared to be a bright, glowing green sword. As with the smoke shoes, an amethyst stripe wrapped around the middle of the handle.

"It reflects a little _too_ much light, so having this out would make it easier for the AIs to see you. Sorry." The hijacker stated. "But that _should_ get you past the mushrooms and into Hijacker Peachaulinsalinaisy's section. It will might not, however, work on that weird giant boulder. Not that we tried, but a sword is not the right tool for moving rocks. That... should be very obvious."

"You're not gonna give us a 'tutorial' like Daminna?"

"Why should I?" The acid hijacker asked, "You should all know how a sword works. Those boots, on the other hand... fancy work. Is what I would say if us hijackers were not currently engaged in a cold war."

Mabel was about to lift the pack up, finally taking in the line... when, looking down, she handed it over to Dipper.

"You get these." She told him. "This just doesn't _feel right_ anymore."

"Wait! Before you move on to the next section!" Sizzcorra said again. "Did Daminna ever do something... strange?"

"Like turn into smoke?" Asked Dipper.

"Yeah. Well..."

Within a split-second, the hijacker of acid transformed into a purple liquid version of herself. Then green. Then orange. Then blue. Then she changed back, regaining her solidity. The colored outfit around her was not altered at all in the process.

"Yeah. Just to warn you, we hijackers are like... ahead of the game. Especially that one with the spiders."

Nodding, Dipper started rushing from red to rose-red, picking up the entire line without facing any resistance for what seemed like the first time in the Gifocalypse. At the end, Sizzcorra briefly floated to the side in line, finally placing her feet down. Once said leader was captured, all of the other AIs once again had pink armbands zapped on their wrists before being zapped, in their entirety, through the ceiling of the cave.

"Huh." He said. "I didn't think any group of these would take less effort than Raffaela."

* * *

Too bad all good baths had to come to an end. Well, maybe aside from one with a downloaded-Soos brain, but still. She was getting too far ahead of herself.

.GIFfany took her time when it came to exiting, even using the computer-reported 'capture' of Hijacker Sizzcorra as a good 'you have been bathing too long' point. Throwing her head back as she sprang from her deep tub, she smiled at the burst of fresh air that flowed through the metal city that was her Construction Site. The air was, at least, cool enough for the water to feel refreshing as she began stepping out, yet warm enough to not cause any discomfort.

Taking yet another deep inhale - still not being able to get enough of being able to do that, even after three days with this improved form - she made the walk across her room's pink hallways wearing nothing but the smirk on her face. There will be a section modeled off of her in-game house, of course, but when you have the sheer black magic power and can create matter from nothing, why not give yourself an enourmous house with its own mega-bath?

She came up to the massive wardrobe lying near the end and ran a finger along the doorway. Then paused. While still in her naked form, she decided to turn around and into the full-body mirror. _Not_ those kind of chartreuse-framed mirrors produced in Domain 11. No way. She had no intention of viewing her fantasy through a screen when she would rather watch it unfold with her very eyes, her prize making his way ever-so closer with each professor getting .GIFfany's debt repaid. Normally the impatient kind, .GIFfany could at least relax at the way her plan was unfolding. Everything coming right into place.

The spell worked wonders on using her sprites as a template for the body. Her hair was still just as vibrant a pink as those hexadecimal numbers could allow, now allowed to be shaded and brightened in a way even the highest-defined electronics could not replicate. The great, smooth, circles with the perfect pink centers that were her eyes, ready to highlight themselves at any compliment. Her generouly-sized breasts were hardly any bad, either. And they rested over a slim, curved waist, and those giving way to her lengthy, smooth legs. She flexed her feet around to get more views and angles of those.

Deciding a rear view was in order, she turned around to get a view of her wet butt. Just as rounded and ready to shake as she remembered. Feeling especially risque, she trailed a finger down her right cheek, watching as her skin glistened from the bath water. She finished off her check by giving herself a spank with the same hand, winking at the mirror for the finale as her rear jiggled lightly.

"I wish Soos could see that..." she sighed, turning back to the wardrobe. Her entire body fuzzed with bright pink electricity, and like that, she was completely dried. Why did Sizzcorra prefer giffinium towels to that solution? "Well now, which one of you wants to be worn by me?"

The doors flung themselves open. Arranged neatly on hangers was a set of identical white school uniform shirts. Also aligned neatly were her cobalt-color skirts. A stack of cable headbands were arranged neatly at the bottom, once again being identical. Two things stood out from this list: A real-life version of her train conductor uniform, which she rubbed a hand through in fond memory, and... a maroon copy of her skirt?

She ripped it out of the wardrobe, eyes already beginning to become solar-hot. There was a note attatched to it, and one written in _ordinary paper_ too. Don't they know giffinium paper is the best way to physically send things? And that e-mail is better regardless?

 _Thought you could use some change. Love, Leona's artistic followers. (^_-)-_

.GIFfany threw the skirt on the ground and sent an exceptionally large bolt of lightning on it, reducing the garment to ash. With a sigh, one each of the many identical shirts flew out of the metal wardrobe.

She stepped forward and opened a seemingly random door as the shirt began flinging itself over her head and arms. There, as a skirt began floating its way over to her, she glanced down the hall after all of neatly-organized, assorted panties. Not more than two steps in, and she already grabbed yet another plain white pair, slipping them on. Her skirt came in and lifted itself up her legs shortly after, and she commanded a pair of socks and Mary Janes to greet her as she walked out of the panty hall. With her skirt on, she double-checked to make sure that all down properly. Half the time, she considered panty-flashing to be going a little too far.

She stepped into her own socks and shoes, then finally adjusted her hair-bow. With a reach into her inventory to spray herself with a mouth-freshener (again), she made her way even further down the hall to her king-sized bed. There, she was greeted by a customized dummy of Soos.

"Are you ready?" She asked the thing that was even more lifeless than she was.

It obviously could not respond, but .GIFfany did not care. She half-lept, half-flew on the bed, wrapped her arms around it, and proceeded to make dry heaving sounds as she tried to furiously stick her tongue down the dummy's non-existant throat. It barely had enough of a mouth to even get into the 'lips,' as they consisted of the exterior simply folded in on itself.

She took a break to look off to the side. There, watching from the corner of the room. A Melody dummy, being hung by the arms with milky pink metal chains, and resting over a corner painted blue with shark-dummies resting on top. This only really looked like that corner of the room was a pool of sharks if one saw it with blurry vision, but graphics are never what really matters in a game.

"See that, Melody? He came back for me. He will always come back for me! And I will have a special place for him! A place in my virtual world, where I get him to agree to download himself in my game! We will be together forever! And you... you..."

With only one stream of electricity going on each chain as a warning, both of the chains broke, sending the dummy flying to a not-watery grave.

"Ha ha! Ha ha! Yes!" She cheered, pumping her fist for good measure. "Oh, what's that Soos? You stopped caring about that rotten real girl and want to jump into my game? Oh, you love my new processing power, stronger than any computer on Earth? Well, thank you! Thank you for coming to your senses! _Thank you for choosing to be with me after all!_ _ **Thank you for playing**_ **Romance Academy 7** _ **!**_ "

She struck an index finger out, which almost instantly transformed itself into a flash drive. Giving a final, monotonous laugh, she plunged this straight through the soft forehead of the Soos replica, watching with glee as cotton began leaking out. She shifted her finger back, flipped over so that she fell backwards on the bed, and began laughing even more.

"I did it! I won! Soos x .GIFfany forever! Soos x .GIFfany forever! Soos x .GIFfany forever! Soos x .GIFfan-"

It was then that she looked over to the room's other entrance, then immediately began regretting having a number of ways for her to travel from room to room. Standing there was Stan, wide-eyed, pale as a ghost, hand shaking as he could barely hold on to the doorknob. .GIFfany moved a hand up to her mouth and froze.

"How much of that did you see?" She asked.

"When I came in here, you jumped on that dummy of Soos. One of those mud-wearing copies told me a position for being the narrator of a commercial was opened and told me to see you, buuuut..."

"Oh! So you did not walk in on me bathing then. That is good."

"Listen... .GIFfany, I think we need to talk..."

* * *

Wendy was all set to hack down some mushrooms. Getting her new sword ready, she entered a stance-

That happened to involve her foot lightly tapping against one of the 'shrooms in her path. A small pop of air was heard, and the large mushroom began deflating right before the group's very eyes.

"Wait." Said Dipper. "Please don't tell me..."

He poked another, larger mushroom with his finger. Even though his nails were not particularly long that day, it still ended up popping right by the contact point, shrinking down until it was but a pileup in front of them.

Following this was the band walking right through the rest of the mushrooms. Every single one of them touched had the same result.

"Wait a minute," said Dipper, "We didn't need the smoke shoes because that liquid was almost harmless. We don't need the swords because these mushrooms are like balloons. The next card is in that last area. I'm willing to bet we won't need the upgrade from here, either. Watch, I bet this boulder will just break apart or something. It doesn't even look like a real boulder."

The group working their way back to the intersection, Dipper tapped the orange obstruction. Only to find that it didn't budge. He tapped a few more times, then gave it a slight push.

Then it cracked. A screech was heard from inside.

A massive, black, hairy spider leg tore itself out of the 'boulder,' accompanied by another screech. As a second leg joined it after, the group began talking a few steps backward.

"I think we should run." Wendy said.

"Where?" Asked Dipper.

"To the one other place with something resembling company! That mushroom path!"

And all four of them bolted down the third pathway. The oversized spider, with its ten red eyes and razor-sharp fangs, fully burst out of its egg just after they started treading over the fallen fungi mass. With a mighty leap, it landed in front of the path's entrance, just stopping where the trail became too narrow for the massive arachnid to enter. As they continued running, they could not see the spider trying to claw at them before giving up, hissing, and falling asleep.

Their collective, natural arachnophobia briefly overrode any hint of achluophobia, as it took a brief halt of panting and holding their hands over their knees before the team noticed that the wall-lining lights failed to do their job in this area.

"Where are we?" Mabel asked.

"Okay, if I know these weirdos by now, I think they're gonna turn on the lights at any second, and we're suddenly standing in something 'quirky.'" Wendy gave as a... sort-of answer. "Does anyone wanna bet? It's just for fun."

Before any of them could reply, however, Wendy's prediction turned out to be absolutely correct. This portion of the cavern went from being exceptionally dark to exceptionally _light_. In fact, once the light began hitting the group, they were convinced that they had somehow been warped to the surface. All of them had to place their hands over their eyes to get a look at the settings of the third division:

It _did_ look like a bright blue sky with white clouds and a shining sun. However, closer inspection revealed that the 'sun' was an exceptionally bright, large light. The 'sky' was just a painted cave ceiling. And the clouds... those were actually real. This portion was large enough to have its own weather system. Although this did not stop a small group from being gathered around a sort of generator labeled _Cloud Machine - NOT a "Smoke Machine!"_ Speaking of which, several copies in outfits which looked to be made completely out of mushroom were digging around patches upon patches of a variety of fungi. As they were not dissolved on contact, it was reasonable enough to guess that the mushrooms 'blocking' the path were the duds of that batch too. Most notably, however, was the large, flat arena in the center. The same 'Mushroom .GIFfany' seen from the entrance floated her way down, using a pink parasol to glide down in spite of her flight abilities.

"Welcome to the mushroom section! I assume you are here for the prized Star Shield and some sleeping powder, both tools that should surely aid you in need of that giant spider blocking the fourth and final path! I already know about your progress. News travels fast thanks to Dove. I am Hijacker Peachaulinsalinaisy."

"We were just chased by a giant spider!" Soos exclaimed, "So that sounds like a good reward!"

"To get it, you must survive our Battle of 100 Potential Lovers!"

This caused all four humans to blink. For those keeping record, this was the first thing that briefly broke Mabel from scratching the purple patches.

"We have to fight a _hundred_ of you? At once?" Wendy asked. "I'm sorry, I should have expected something like that at _some point_ , let alone the _beginning_ , but that's a tall order!"

"No no no, one at a time! I will set up your first opponent soon. In the mean time, may one of you step forward to the arena? This is a series of duels. You may change your player, even in-round, but you have to tag them in! So, select your first participant now."

"Well, I've been itching - sorry Mabel, no offense - to do some classic one-on-one, so I guess-"

"I'll do it!" Soos stepped forward. "Again, most of this mess is because of .GIFfany, and she wants me. I'll be the first to brave whatever challenge awaits me!"

"Oh, this is not harmful at all. You pick a weapon - those swords will work, even if they are from... _her._ Whenever you tap the other party with that weapon, and _only_ that weapon, you get a point. The same applies for her. If you get three points, you win the round. But if any opponent ever gets three points, you all lose and have to work under us. Also, points against you carry over if you tag out, but not between rounds. Ready?"

"Wait. Just so we're clear, we're just fighting other .GIFfanys, right?"

"Yes! And if you want a further, cuter reminder of this... just think of this as a kind of shirts-vs-skins."

"And I'm skins? I'm sorry, but I feel uncomfortable if .GIFfany's sort of-watching-"

"Um... no," a new voice said, "We're skins."

The speaker of this was, apparently, his first opponent. Dressed in a black shirt that went down to her knees, Soos was puzzled at this statement. With trembling, azure hands, and an equally-trembling lip pierced with gold, she held a pink sword that appeared to be shorter than those Sizzcorra gave the group. She stepped into the arena, eyes darting around nervously under her cobalt hair, not quite looking at her opponent.

"How are you guys sk-"

And she tossed the entire shirt off, revealing naught but a white pair of... bloomers? underneath. It was hard to tell the exact garment, but it was definitely panty-like.

"I am Wire Untangler, and I have no idea what I am doing!" She said, pointing her pink blade in Soos's direction in a shakey manner that practically confirmed what she just said.

Shrugging, Soos decided to mimick this guesture. Minus the vibrations.

Wendy's face was burried into her palm at this point. Dipper tried to keep his eyes on Soos. Mabel didn't even seem to notice, focused too much on scratching the ( _slowly_ fading) itchy purple spots.

With this, giant, glowing, pixelly yellow, white, and pink text appeared on the scene and hovered above the arena. Both Soos and his current opponent jumped back in surprise as they saw the word and number: **ROUND 1**

Even after the word **FIGHT!** showed up and all words disappeared, both parties stood still.

"So... do we attack each-other now?" Asked his opponent.

"I think so."

"Yeah you do!" Cheered the hijacker, now seating herself on a chair in the middle of the painted sky and definitely out of the IPN's reach. "Go on, Wire Untangler! Make me proud of my sister! And the rest of your ninety-nine duelists! And the thirty-six thousand watchers who aren't part of this but do work with this sector of this domain! And for all of .GIFfany kind!"

"I'm legitimately kind of uncomfortable about this!" Wire Untangler was practically using one hand to toy around with the gold chains linking to her breast piercings. "I just want to find a player for myself and only resort to violence whenever they try to look up a real girl!"

Soos gave a light swing of his sword across her, the tip barely tapping her stomach. It was here that the two of them noticed the six lights hanging above, three on one side and three on the other. One of the lights on the side Soos started by lit with green.

"Point for the human side! Come on Wire Untangler, may the grace be with you!" Announced Hijacker Peachaulinsalinaisy.

The fighter replied by giving a swing back, resulting in the first of her lights to glow a bright pink.

"Yay! And a point goes to Wire Untangler!"

"Oh, okay, so I just have to barely touch him." Wire Untangler finally smiled. "I understand!"

She jabbed her blade at him. Once again, this barely tapped him, this time on the chin. The second pink light went on.

"Another point to Wire Untangler!" The hijacker cheered, yet again. "And you get the idea. If I kept announcing this for every point in all one hundred battles, it would get tiring. Right?"

"Wow. No offense Soos," and _now_ Wire Untangler began showing some cockiness, "but you are not putting up that much of a fight. Have you been grinding on the copies in the past domains?"

Soos gasped in offense. "I would never! Level grinding is for those who want a cheap, boring way to beat a game! Unless it's required, then that's just bad game design."

He resumed his battle mode after the short conversation. Stance ready, he made one successful stab and caused his opponent to hop back before he could deal a finishing mark. With Wire Untangler still slightly looking uncertain, Soos decided to take a riskier route, drop his sword completely, and kick it over to her. Sure enough, the blade tapped against one of her bare toes, making her shrug.

"Okay. That's three." She herself said. Based on Peachaulinsalinaisy looking like she was about to say something, the fighter interrupted the hijacker's same words. "Now, as the first one in line, I guess it would make sense if I told you about mushrooms before you capture me in that pack."

She cleared her throat first: "Mushrooms are what give the poisons of Domain 9 its solidity. Its _punch._ And dizzying, disorienting, drug-like effects. The three Ds. Those are the most important standards for each and every mushroom we collect here at the Mushroom Sector, which is then grounded into a fine powder and added with the other components to form our common poisons. As the first of the four components - _in our opinion_ as Peachaulinsalinaisy said in the recent revision - mushrooms are the most important component. Because without mushrooms, the poison will not carry any side-effects long distance and before the actual acid-based part of it deals damage. In fact, the mushroom drug-like mist can even impact _before_ the acid side-sprays! How is _that_ for priority, people at the Acid Sector?"

She made nothing else after that, and yet another copy, this one only wearing blue bloomers over her orange-tan skin (and sunglasses below her blonde hair, which she removed), walked up to her.

"Um, Soos. This is the part where you claim your victory and capture me. Don't worry, I want to talk to Searah. We are all big fans of her work. But do not like Sandy very much... she really does not _care_ about her work, she is too 'spiritual' for our tastes." Her leading hijacker was nodding as she said this, "But Searah. By cutting to the point and with her 'if you do not work with us, and are not as idealistic as we are, _don't even look at us_ ' atittude! She is a real inspiration to us all!"

Wendy tossed him the pack without even looking, and he took in the completely resistant-less copy with just a few flips of the device's switches.

"You're not serious about having us fight all 100 of them, are you?" Dipper asked the lead hijacker. He immdiately wondered why he bothered, both because he felt he knew the answer already and because he wasn't sure if she could even hear him.

"Yes. Yes I am." The 'princess' hijacker seemed confused at his question.

"Usually when something that sounds long and annoying happens, there's a way out of it. Someone steps in and just tells it to stop." Soos threw himself into the conversation, just as the next topless AI stepped into the ring.

"Yeah, exactly Soos." Dipper said with an exhausted breath. "So. Is there any way we can tell you to stop this whole 'tournament' and you'll let us on to the last sector, and _maybe_ we can make it to the next domain?"

"...There's nothing you can say that will convince me that I can think of. And it's not like you can reach me that well. Those smoke shoes are _horrible_ at climbing up like this. It takes too long. And even if you do, I can just leap across the cave's chamber. Sorry, I just have the patience of a statue."

"What about .GIFfany holding us on a time limit?"

Hearing this brought a realization to Peachaulinsalinaisy, as her face indicated. "Keyboard to One's Heart, stand back. Abort battle."

She was apparently talking to the next challenger, based on how she was the one to step back. Said student copy crossed her arms after this, glaring over at the leading figure while she lept down from her ledge and towards the center arena.

"Yes, I forgot about that." Said leader explained. "We all kind of wanted to _do something_ about Dian, .GIFfany, or both. And I would not like .GIFfany to win. And you running out of time would make her win. Because of this, I ask of you lovely subjects to waste no more time, and capture me and my fighter elites. Rounds 3-100! Fall in!"

What they judged was exactly 98 other copies, each in bloomers of various colors, weilding pink swords, and having little else, charged into the room. They all attempted to gather on the arena, but due to their numbers they had to quit when they realized Soos was forced to back himself up.

"And the rest of my group, who have taken the task of the more creative parts of our life, will work on the Construction Site. Sneaking in some mushroom-related items under .GIFfany's nose. Which will be difficult, because a lot of our kind of mushrooms have strong scents. Especially when baked into pizza."

"I guess you have a power that's not possessing things too?"

She nodded, turned to a version of herself made of what looked like solid fungi-like biomass, and then transformed back.

The only further word from the rest of the 100 was Keyboard to One's Heart shouting "You really couldn't let me get _one point_ in? Ugh, fine." before their leading hijacker stepped to the side and let Soos vacuum them up. Taking in 99 .GIFfanys proved to hardly be much of a task, probably broke some kind of student copy per-domain-capturing record, and soon their leader took a blonde-colored sack out from the single item space in her inventory. Looking off to the side for a moment, she also took out the matching pale yellow shield from her weapon slot. Peachaulinsalinaisy moved the hand holding the former around, to get it into Soos's attention.

"This should help you with the spider. It will put her to sleep." She moved the other. "And this... it can split into four shields. Use them all to defend yourselves."

Nodding with certainty of those tasks, Soos finally captured the hijacker of mushrooms, causing armbands to yet again spawn on the mushroom-gardeners and yet again zip them away.

* * *

It figured that the spider had fallen asleep. And, prior to that, it moved so that it was no longer really blocking anything.

"Aw, really?!" Dipper exclaimed.

Which caused the spider to wake up. And that caused him to toss the entire sack of sleeping mushroom-powder at the beast. With a deep breath, he looked over at the elevator taking them all closer to the surface, but fixed his look on the exceptionally dark, web-filled final trail.

"Hey .GIFfany copies," Soos began speaking to the pack, and its increasingly frequent layers of dark purple static. "You've been awfully quiet for most of the journey. Even though we can talk to you now. Any reason why?"

"I do not know much about these copies." Answered Rose, "We only really got to know the other professors."

"I was actually asleep through most of it," Was Kathody's answer, "I think this poison stuff is... kind of boring."

"Right now I am telling Sizzcorra that I have begun changing myself for the better. It's a start, of course, but it is better than nothing." Was Searah's.

"Some of us just don't have anything to say." Cardia shrugged. "I think I said everything I could have possibly said to you guys."

"I may not have much to _say_ ," Next on the answering list was Leona, "But I have a lot to _think_. Thank you for showing up and humiliating those jerks that took over Dian's domain. Shame on them for disrespecting a good friend like that."

"I can kind of relate..." Sonia added, "I mean, if someone tried to outright take over what I was doing, well... I would have a word with them. A number of words. Wait. Does this make Dian stronger than me? She was able to not get taken over by anger and just let this domain turn into something else peacefully. No, wait, we thought that stuff was weak. Right? Did we?"

"You could really learn about doing other things peacefully." Sandy said with a finger-wag. "No attacks. No harsh punishment. No sacrifices."

"Last and kind of least," Said Bubbles, "I just want to hear what you guys say and see what you see during a mission. This is kind of exciting, seeing you like this. In-action when you're not getting trolled by me."

Mabel gave a huff at the last one. "See that? That, right there. The 'watching' and the 'trolling.' I'm warming back up to the copies, but you gotta stop with the whole watching! It's one of the biggests reasons why I'm afraid of Stan."

"Stan's fine." Said Cardia. "One of the workers at Gif Bytes said that Hato showed you a clip from the Construction Site."

And that got her to sigh in defeat. "No, you're right. Things may be bad here. It's not even just you guys, it's all the monsters we found all summer back in Gravity Falls. I'm starting to think... they're too dangerous to get involved with, and we should try to avoid running into them by accident again. It's a gray area for me now. But yeah, Grunkle Stan's probably having the best three days of his life."

* * *

"I thought I was having the greatest three days of my life here, but they're actually the worst!"

The Construction Site was all starting to look way too similar for Stanley Pines. When a dream city becomes something of a dream nightmare, all the hot spots and large, flashy, neon sign-covered entertainment areas began to blur together.

One of the neon signs of .GIFfany began moving, looking down on Stan with a concerned frown.

"Why are you running?" She asked. "I only wanted to pretend I was downloading your employee into the virtual world so we could be together forever. If I really wanted to do that in real life, I would have done it already. I promise to ask him when he gets here, either that, or I delete him."

"You stay away from me!" He pointed at the sign in response. "You're nuts! I should have listened to my family! The deal's off! Now, how do I get out of here?"

He was met with a large amount of light to his right side. Turning, he saw one of the many outdoor movie projection screens showed an upscaled version of .GIFfany's pixel form. Becides the size, the only real difference between this and most of her other pixel appearances was that she was holding a small replica of Earth in her hands.

"You are really in space! I just put a field of black metal over most of the sky to hide this view. But I will get rid of it once I reveal this project to the public."

"You said I could leave if I figured out how! Tell me how! I beat you once, I can do it again!"

.GIFfany's physical self emerged from the ground, less than a meter behind him. After noticing this, he turned around with a stomp.

"Part of the fun is seeing you try. To shoot an in-joke between Professors Rose and Dove to the ground, this is one transportation that can _not_ be solved by buying plane tickets. You will have to wait until midnight before you can leave freely."

"I _like_ Rose! If she's not crazy like you are, I'll find a way to talk her into overthrowing you!" He began making his way to the leading copy. Each time he tried to strike, however, she disappeared into the ground, re-appearing behind him for every failed punch. Giving up after a dozen attempts, his arms shook in insatiable rage. "When I find a way to-"

This was when a snowflake landed on his face. And that drew his attention to the sudden decline in temperature. .GIFfany took note as well, quietly telling herself "No, no, no, no... not now. Not her."

The cold feeling was coming from one specific direction, which is naturally where Stan and .GIFfany both began looking. There lied the unambiguous source of the environment change. A field of snow stood in the alley bordering another set of towering pink apartment buildings. Atop the snow, a swirling micro-snowstorm. And in the center of the storm, a figure clad in a white suit with a jade stripe. A similar suit, closer to Stan's proportions, leaned against the wall to the side.

" **You!** " .GIFfany yelled to the figure. "Of all the profressors to take Wendy's space-proof technology and use them to get here, why did it have to be you? And you brought snow from your own domain, too! That is insulting! You know, Burnda would not bring fire from her domain! ...I think. ...Oh no, _I hope she didn't..._ "

The figure pointed at Stan. Then the index finger flipped, and curled twice in a beckoning motion. Finally, it pointed to the suit, before the figure's arm retreated to their side.

"You know what?" He told .GIFfany. "I'm going to show you how much that brain-stab freaked me out! I'm gonna take my chances with that complete snow stranger before I take my chances with you! I'm off! And if you weren't lying about what you said, you can't stop me, because you told me I could leave if I found out how!"

.GIFfany stood still as Stan walked off. She simply made a finger-over-neck motion to the figure, who replied with a single, long-lasting nod.

* * *

While not as dark as the Mushroom Sector initially was, the fourth and final section hardly had as much lighting for itself either.

All the team could make out, with Mabel being the possible exception, was that there were webs. And the same old rocks mixed in. Going deeper revealed that there were more webs... vaguely. Again, due to the light sources being shut off, it all blended together.

One thing that did stand out was the decet of glowing red lights that peered at them from the other end of the tunnel. They were in two sets of five, each arranged with four as the edges of a diamond shape and one in the middle.

"I can tell you are pressed for time..." Her voice echoed, its tone carrying a large hint of frigid death and sneaking kill-attacks. "So I will explain what the Spider Sector does while I guide you to my nest..."

"Who are you?" Dipper asked the figure.

"Again. Follow me to my nest..." The eyes vanished. "For now, and apologies if 'poison' no longer sounds like a real word after this:

"Why do you think our poison has its _poison_ qualities? What makes it the throat-burning, skin-boiling masterwork it really is? That is from our spider venom. This rare breed of cave spider is what allows us to get to the _real point._ With no _sidetracking._ You see, life is all but a slow and painful delay leading to the harsh inevidability of death."

"Cold." Replied Wendy. "True, but cold."

"Poison, like all the elements, _should_ be our way of convincing others to get their into _Romance Academy 7_." The light neither let up nor dimmed down. There were still visible lanterns dotting the tunnel, at the same distance as the ones in past areas, so the clues that this was a blatant darkness added for dramatic effect yet again were lain out in front of them. "You see, I realized that life is binary. Just like our coding. You are either alive, or you are dead. And when you are alive, you try to be as alive as possible. If that makes any sense. What better of a way to battle enemies than by installing fear into other enemies? This is where bringing those to death in the most painful way imaginable comes in. With the help of spider venom, our manufactured super-toxin, we'll make sure that anyone... say, .GIFfany, who tries to oppose us with force will meet a terrible end. Face it, she might eventually. For that, I aimed to make those last moments before her state clicks from the one of life to the zero of death as painful and full of regret as I possibly could. Which just reminds those of us that are still alive. To live life as best as you can. And as long as you can. And if you download yourself into _Romance Academy 7_ , well... we have yet to find an upper limit for how long our code lasts. Maybe even longer, if we get ourselves away from Earth and out from our Sun before the end of its life. But I am getting sidetracked. Without venom, the poison will not bring _pain._ It cannot truly _work_ against .GIFfany and her devoted allies. It will not install _fear_ into them. It will not be _poison._ That is why it is the most important of the four components. That is why it should truly be the first."

"...You lost me." Said Wendy. "That was long. So... you want to kill people who don't like your game?"

"Woah!" Dipper indirectly answered Wendy's question with his following exclamation: "Back up! You're trying to _kill_ .GIFfany?!"

"Oh wait, really?" Wendy half-laughed after that, "And here I was thinking you were about to be a mass-murderer. Wouldn't .GIFfany, like, hear you right now?"

The lights _finally_ began brightening back up. Just around the time the group's walk was finally no longer on stone, and instead on a kind of... black carpet? It felt oddly soft on the group's shoes, too. Not too far into this new carpet area of the cave was a single rounded table made out of a deep purple giffinium, distinct from the color associated with Dian or even that shared by the other hijackers. More noteworthy than that was the massive spider web behind, easily being double the height of the desk. Which was already a double of the twins' height.

"The Risen One, not even through Dove, can find us here. I plated the giffinium in such a way as to remove sound and video recording. Unless she pays this sector a direct visit, which I doubt will happen until it is too late, all she can do is blindly throw her teleporting armbands onto us, as that tracks us by location."

She _finally_ made her appearance through descending on the web. The few parts of her skin that were not a bleach white had pale, gray shading. Purple hair dropped downwards in a series of straight, incredibly thin strings, as if her hair were a mass of dyed webs dripping from a tree's branches. As the glowing indicated, in the place an eye would have been was a quintet of much smaller, red eyes arranged in a diamond, on her left and right face, with the fifth one on each side in the middle. Her 'outfit' appeared to be little more than thin patches of web. Three ones with enough layers to _barely_ be opaque managed to cover her important areas, but otherwise seemed to swirl around with no rhyme or reason. Over them, she had a much thinner, transparent 'dress' of sorts made out of the same material. As she sat against the web, her legs temporarily multiplied. Each of them shifted into the sight of four legs as she glided them through the air, before re-merging themselves back into one.

"So. You know the plan. I am the one hijacker who intends on going for .GIFfany's blood. And I want your help. My name is Alma. And I am recruiting you for a straight cruise to the Construction Site. In fact, I will no longer waste your time and leak several details, such as that the Construction Site is located out in space. Also... Stan and Ford both escaped."

"Really? Stan escaped too?" Mabel said, finally appearing to lighten up. "I mean, that's great! All we have to worry about is going back home and mabe giving .GIFfany a bop for everything she did."

"Reminder: I plan to give her more than a 'bop.' With four humans like you... well, let's say you would be better at stealth-related issues. Sensitive stealth-related issues. So. Do you want to help me prepare my assault?"

"So... let me see if we're thinking about the same thing," Said Dipper, "You want to take us out of this 'game' completely and send us to the Construction Site so that we can attack .GIFfany directly. And this is all because you want to kill her."

"I do. She did not move on from her original, flawed template. She still pursuits a player, in this case _you_ Soos, and resorts to violence to get what she obsesses over! Have any of us resorted to a rythmless assault on meet? No, we gave ourselves standards. All of us. And that sets us apart from that, pardon the pun since I modeled myself to be spider-like, animal of an artificial intelligence."

"Dude, I'm sorry, but I can't really get into a kill-y mode now." Said Soos. "We sort-of promised Rose that we would try to keep as many copies alive as we can. And when we found Professor .GIFfany all broken and glitched up, she seemed like there was a bit of a decent person in her too."

"Stan tried to run away because he walked in on her enacting a fantasy where she dropped a Melody dummy into a fake pool of sharks while she stabbed a a dummy of you in the forehead to download you into the game. Stan himself blurted this out, and this spread to all of us. Including me. I have some... _inside_ abilities to get leaked information faster."

"I'm still gonna have to say no to killing her, unless I absolutely need to. And I'm gonna encourage Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper from thinking the same-"

"I already want to try sparing her." Dipper said with a shrug. "Alma, this is your _family._ Most of them aren't that bad now that they're... "

"Do you _really_ think non-lethality is an option here? We gave her time to learn, to grow, to become her own copy with a unique identity. But she stayed with the template. The flawed, unfinished, bloodthirsty template. Not that _we_ aren't flawed or bloothirsty - indeed, the taste of the Risen One's blood - yes that's not just something Sandy uses - sounds quite quenching - but she is moreso in all traits than all of us. Possibly combined, I dunno."

"What are you guys thinking?" Wendy asked Soos and Dipper, "It's a free ride straight to the Construction Site. We don't have to go through any more stupid domains, and Soos, you thought you killed .GIFfany before. You can do it for real this time, no problem. Mabel, you saw what happened when you tried to just 'talk it out' with Sonia. It didn't work very well. .GIFfany only responds to stuff with violence. If this means violence to the death, it means violence to the death."

"Exactly!" Alma snapped her fingers. "Trying to play it in a non-lethal manner is what she _wants._ What she _craves._ I have been on the same wavelength as her for years. If the Gifocalypse, the one garunteed event that could possibly change her, has not changed her, then there is no hope."

"Mabel?" Wendy asked, "What's say you make this two against two, and Hijacker Alma here settles the tie?"

"Well..." Mabel was staring at the ground. "I mean, this Gifocalypse isn't exactly _over yet..._ "

The spider hijacker leaned over her own desk, seething. Her fangs shone in the cavern's lantern light. "You are taking too long to make an obvious choiccccce..."

"Hey, you're supposed to be a spider person, not a snake person." Soos pointed out, "That's more of a snake thing."

Hijacker Alma ignored his words completely. "I will speed things up for you. You see that 'carpet' you are all standing on? That's not carpet. It's spiders."

Aformentioned 'spider ground' began shuffling around after she said that. Four human hearts practically stopped as the spider-mass formed pits below them, causing an instant drop.

Hijacker Alma was laughing through the whole thing.

* * *

Somehow, the slide of spiders was even _less_ pleasant than it sounded. The group was all ejected in one piece, no bites, no forms of any toxins aside from Mabel's still-diminishing rash. But the tunnel of black still led to a place where more copies, most in similar web-dresses, appeared to be trying to coax spiders into biting odd sheets of magenta giffinim paper, then withdrawl the deep purple liquids from within into pipes.

"Now, my trump card hatched not too long ago. I wish I was there in person, but the video feed's nice enough. Let's see here... ah. Ah! ARGH! You jerks put her to sleep?"

All four of them jumped back a little when they heard another AI, again clad in a spider web-outfit, who appeared to be looking at pipes. "I bet you are wondering about why we makes spiders bite specialized giffinium papers that send their venom straight into tubes. You see, our sector leader, Hijacker Alma, realized that life is binary-"

"We already heard about what venom does." Dipper said. "Now, is there a way out of here?'

"Conveniently, if you go down and take a right at the nearest fork in the road, the path will loop back up to Alma's office! She pulled the 'fake spider floor' trick on you, did she?"

"Yes."

Ringing. The copy took out a cell phone from her Indexitizer and answered it.

"Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh..."

Closing it, she glared at the group.

"Forget what I just said. Alma wants us to capture you now. She said that she herself will be here shortly, after waking up her pet."

And, par for the course with the student .GIFfany copies, getting out was a matter of rushing forward while vacuuming up the occasional copy that lept out at them. To the first-captured copy's credit, however, the pathway _did_ start going uphill after reaching the aformentioned fork.

True to her word, Alma ended up jumping down the pit and chasing after the gang with her feet firmly planted on the spider from before. Wendy actually gave a sigh in relief once the fourth hijacker came into view.

"I'm so glad you came in that way. Do you know how screwed we would have been if you came out of our only exit?"

Of course, she and the others still ran while saying this. One slide that was somewhat rough, but barely noticeable compared to getting caught by the behemoth spider later, and they were back in the more familiar portion of the tunnel, running their way back to the main intersection. Helping things a little was that the tunnels had become small again, causing the spider to waste time squeezing her way out. Upon reaching the elevator leading back up to the main part, the group had well more than enough distance between themselves and Alma.

"You know what?" Said Alma. "Fine! Take it to Dian for all I care! In fact, I'm going to join her! and with several of the small spiders, to boot!"

* * *

Even after the elevator reached its highest (and only other) stop, it was still a bit of a walk to get out of the cave's massive mouth. Even though Alma did _not_ tamper with this elevator during the ride, and even though there were no sounds of her or her spiders following them, the band of four bolted out at top speed. Professor Dian gave them all a wave as their run included going past her.

"Hey guys." She stated. "Did everything go well?"

"Hijacker Alma is chasing after us _right now!_ " Dipper answered.

"But becides that," Mabel ran just as fast as he did, even though her words were less dire, "it was good fun until that happened!"

Speak of the Devil, Hijacker Alma burst right out of the ground after Mabel said that. Not only was she on her enormous sort of spider with two more eyes than her, but the army of tinier arachnids poured out of the ground after her.

"You don't understand!" She cried out. With just a slight, _slight_ hint of desperation. "Do you really think you can let .GIFfany live this time? Have you been letting Professor Rose get into your head? .GIFfany cannot be talked into being your friend! If you refuse to finish her off, she will come back and kill you! She always comes back! And if she doesn't kill you, she will only take you in as her 'date' for eternity! Please guys, killing her is one of the only two ways to get her out of your lives forever! The other way is... even _less_ pleasant, it's something one of the later professors was thinking of, but... let's keep the murder list at .GIFfany, okay?"

Dian sighed. "Do you see why I never stepped in? To any of this? It's because Hijacker Alma has a point. I side with .GIFfany, chances are, someone dies. But if I side with Alma, .GIFfany dies and I can't just throw away the girl that helped me live out my and my player's fantasies and give me a form in the real world _as well as_ the virtual world."

The group finally stopped and positioned themselves in such a way that seemed to be hudding behind the professor of poison, while remaining a good distance away. Alma simply had her small spiders form a column, wide enough to support her far larger ride and lift them into the air.

"Come on now. Don't make me _drag you there._ Dian, get out of the way, or I'm 'drafting' you too."

Mabel stared at the ground for a good moment, then drew in a deep breath. Everyone was certain that at least part of the reason why Alma did not start an attack right away was because she noticed this, and tilted her head in curiosity.

After the exhale, Mabel opened her eyes and clenched her fists. Her pupils finally started getting somewhere closer to their original size. "Dian!" She called out, "Do you have a Main Possession?"

"I do, but... I promised myself to never use it-"

"Now is the time to use it! Come on, don't make me doubt putting faith in a second professor in a row! Like with what happened with Sonia!"

This got Dian to blink under her glasses. "What happened with Sonia?"

"Long story. Heck, it's more like a long chapter in an even longer story. Right now, I need you to go out there, take that Main Possession, and fight back! Come on!" Mabel began chanting: "Di-an! Di-an! Di-an! Di-an!"

Professor Dian silently nodded, turned herself into a stream of magenta electricity, zipped to her desk, then appeared to follow along some trail on the ground. Alma just laughed at the group.

"See? Once a copy has her mind set on something, it is almost impossible to change it. Dian won't change her mind about helping Noriko in fulfilling her fantasy, nor playing a neutral part in everything. .GIFfany never even changed in the first place. So, with her out of the way, I'm just gonna yank you and recruit you to my defense force. Got it?"

Finally picking this as an appropriate area where they had _some_ advantage, the Mystery Shack's staff charged at her with full might. Soos, of course, already had the AI pack loaded and ready, attempting to begin with a simple intake on her part. Alma laughed at the action once again.

"You know how Daminna can turn into smoke , Sizzcorra to acid and Peachaulinsalinaisy into mushrooms? Well, my power is a bit different."

She lept off of her larger spider ride entirely and drew a diagonal line ahead of herself with her finger. One double-take from the entire party revealed that this was literal - a black line hovered in front of her, something she wasted no time in grabbing. Alma was giving off bright blue sparks since the IPN's gust hit her.

"Day One. We just started. Day Two. In the night in-between, the copies that were not captured in... _that_ thing were taught better possession skills, mostly from their professors and mostly from learning things from Risen .GIFfany. I leaked traits about the armbands that pick everyone to the Construction Site and they started figuring out how to temporarly counter getting zapped away. Day Three. In the night in-between, we _all_ learned how to buff immunity to the IPN. Only copies willing to be captured or caught off-guard could come in. This is useful, otherwise I would have to move a lot more to show you this:"

Hijacker Alma turned into a stream of blue electricity, which went into said line. The whole line had a surge fly through it, and she emerged in a... flatter manner. Not in her pixel form - she appeared to be two-dimensional. She flipped herself around, revealing her new paper-like dimensions, before drawing (again, literally, visible black lines and all) a rectangle around herself. Which expanded to a rectangular prism, giving her third dimension back along with it.

"There are a lot more things I could do with that and ways I could do it, because always jumping into a line to go 2D is stupid. Anyway, I have dimensional alteration. Stick with me long enough, and things can get... abstract. Ever heard of something called a tesseract? Heck, I am the only hijacker so far that can manipulate more than just myself with my secondary, new ability. Why don't you see what it's like to be pseudo-flattened?"

"That is going to have to be put on hold for right now! That is, if the group wants to see more of your powers after you eventually free us. You are going to free us, right?"

That exclamation, that statement, and that question were all from Dian. Who had just stomped into the ground, in possession of a white, robotic object roughly the size of a bus. It did take a few looks to understand just _what_ this was: it resembled something of a robotic T-rex, only with three heads and... streams of similar purple, gaseous toxins ran down the spines of its neck, pooling together in a rectanglular depression on its back. All six of its eyes glowed a bright red, as with the animatronics back in the old .GIFfany-fighting day. When each and every single one of the parties involved with the confrontation, including the captured AIs watching through the screen past its growing layer of purple static _and_ including Dian herself, expected a roar from the mechanical beast...

To their disappointment, again including Dian's, they all got an "Excuse me, I think you should back away." from her in response.

Wasting no time, Mabel lept on the tail of the mechanized beast replica, ran up the back, jumped over the poison pit, and made sure to run becide the poison stream leading up the center neck. She grabbed on the middle head and pointed at Alma.

"Dian! Try to take me closer!"

"Um... okay... got it..."

She made fists with her Main Possession's hands, which was not very threatening considering how they were about the relative size of an estimated T-rex's front claws. Wasting no time after that, Dian charged her way towards the now-smirking Hijacker Alma.

"Okay." The spider-copy continued, "You win. I guess maybe you can change more than once. And I guess .GIFfany could change... at least once herself. This should be fun."

"So you're not going to fight me? I think Soos wants to see an AI fight another AI."

Reflecting this, his eyes at that moment could rival a compliment-loaded .GIFfany's in sheer size and sparkle.

"I am not really complaining. Now that I think about it. I don't... really... want to fight... either."

"Oh, well, that is good. I do still kind of want to fight, so..."

And with one whistle, the large spider instantly struck a front leg through the chest of the dino-mech. Upon coming back, it had a small clump of matching metal, magenta sparks dancing along its limited volume. A brief period of time later, and Dian lept out of this clump, performed a combat roll on the ground and staring at the large spider appearing to toy around with what it just stabbed. Its toxins left their pockets on the body, dissipating into the air.

Alma sighed. "While I cannot deny that you have changed twice from the base .GIFfany, you still center your code at the most heart-like part of your Main Possession. What a cliche."

With a wave of her hand, the spider's leg gave a near-horizontal slash across the replica of the Cretaceous beast. Mabel felt the upper half beginning to slide off immediately, taking a leap over to the spider pileup.

While pretty far and high on it, Mabel was still on the large stack of small spiders, so she had to run her way up while saying "Ew, ew, ew, just pretend it's carpet again..." and needing to shudder after trying to climb the larger counterpart, as that was her first time making direct contact with it. She successfully surmounted the eight legged freak and looked up at the final hijacker staring her down.

Alma shrugged.

"What are you going to do, Mabel? Dian's character arc was... interesting, to say the least. I want to see where yours goes."

Mabel took in a deep, heavy breath.

"Alma." she said, "Look. I understand. .GIFfany was awful. Is awful. But if there was one thing I saw, one thing that made most of the copies we've seen get better... well uh, family and stuff had to play in that somehow. Dipper said that he got to set Searah on a better path by trying to trick her into being friends with the other copies. Getting to know them more. I think the solution here is family? To just stick with your siblings and find the answers together?"

"Well, actually..." Dipper interjected, "Mabel, you came up with this idea by yourself. I talked about family to her too, like once, but that was it."

Her head peeked up as this hit her. "Yeah, but... I never said I depended on you or anything. Sometimes we also solve things by ourselves. With our little things that made us... us! What we grew from over the summer! And I'm sure that if the two million-something of you all put your heads together, you could do the same!"

Alma smirked a little. Bringing one hand to the other, she opened up her two-box Indexitizer. Dipper outright flinched at the cannon that was occupying her weapon slot, yet Mabel remained calm, smiling at the AI the entire time. Sure enough, Alma withdrew the jade green card in the item slot, handing it out.

"I'm still not completely convinced, but maybe. Just maybe. If there is anyone that can convince the Risen One to think of a new name and pick a fresh, new life, it's you guys. I still think she deserves a bit of karma, though. I'm a pretty strong believer in that, but that is another story. Don't expect information out of me though - I'm keeping my lips zipped."

She lept off of her spider throne and clapped twice. With that, all of the spiders - the hundreds small and the single large - retreated back into the cavern, with the bigger sister (in a literal sense, not a metaphorical sense as she was the latest born) to them discarding the 'heart' of Dian's Main Possession. Mabel had since rode off of the giant's front right leg as if it was a slide.

"Also. Since I left and we still talked about the whole 'I'm planning to kill .GIFfany,' it will be harder to try to justify why I resorted to that if I was by myself. No offense to my students that were not picked up by your gadget, but I feel a lot safer if I was in that box thing with my friends. Go ahead, pick me up."

Right after Mabel got the card, Dipper was the one to do it. Another storm of pink lightning falling upwards happened, being drawn out from the bowels of the colossal cavern. The male sibling of the younger Pine twin set then turned to Dian.

"Well, I guess .GIFfany thinks I am not important enough to beam over." The aformentioned professor said, "That or she thought about it and she now believes that the copies up there will instantly turn to join their professors. From what I understand, she tried to take Cardia. Well... I just want to be with my friends. So, in our 'tradition,' here is my little 'damaged' appearance."

As with Sonia, she pulled a sleeve, which caused the scandalous reveal of... some tears appearing at the end of her shirt sleeves, and the bottom of her pants ripping off. The right knee of her outfit was also slashed and ruined.

After this extremely risque and lewd display, Dipper held his head down as he vacuumed the magenta-haired copy herself, glasses and everything. Three particular cries of "DIAN!" were heard shortly after. Dipper flipped the screen to reveal Alma making a zipper motion over her lips before walking away. Also, Dian getting group-hugged by Bubbles, Leona, and Sonia - the sources of the cries.

"Okay dudes, so that copy that's _also_ named Wendy is coming up next." Said Soos. "We need to come up with a way to tell their names apart. And fast. Maybe we should spend this time picking for a nickname."

It was something to keep in mind as the ninth card was inserted, bubble engulfing the group once again.

* * *

"Alright Rose," Dipper said with a bit of a half-sigh along the colorful void between Wires, "tell us what you know about Professor Wendy."

"Oh, her? I... actually do not have much to say about her." Rose admitted. "She can be a bit... tough."

"Your tough Wendy vs our tough Wendy." Said _this_ Wendy. "I'll still take those odds."

"She can possess air, so be careful. And remember, try to spare as many of us as you can! Seriously! Do _**NOT**_ let her discourage you!"

"Hey, Bubbles!" Kathody giggle-shouted across the void. Well, the shrinking void. The one hundred duelests in particular did a decent job at crowding the pack, and a reminder that it was finite in size. Kathody herself hobbled on to view, her limited walking caused by her trying to hold Searah, Cardia, and Sandy around her arms. "We were thinking of setting up our _own_ 'Four Friends!'"

"We were?" Asked Cardia. "I mean, that is not a _bad_ idea, but you can't really force friendship..."

"I see what you are doing woman," was Sandy's comment, "but dudette, I think that having a competition between better friend groups kinda goes against the whole purpose of friendship to begin with."

Searah snickered. "I agree with Sandy. We should just become the Eight Friends, all together. Rose, do you want to join?"

"That reminds me," Rose said with a sigh, "as a matter of fact, _everyone_ from Professor Wendy onwards is also a little... different. Maybe even stranger. Again, please be careful. And again, please keep them alive."

"Kathody, you are cute." Bubbles finally replied. "Dian, remember what we were going to do once you got here, and we had all of this time together?"

Dian nodded. "Psycho-analytical critique."

"You have those textbooks in your Indexitizer?"

"I whacked a tree with one of them just so I could fit a sixth one into my weapon slot."

Both of them turned over to the art duo, who stared back at them with wide eyes.

"What are you planning? Trying to tear down our masterpieces?" Asked Leona, starting to sweat. She had her hands held out defensively. "D-don't even think about it!"

"Okay, maybe I went a little overkill after getting higher self-esteem, but what are you thinking about? Both of you are going to get into my head?" Sonia practically mimicked Leona's stance.

"Hey, Four Friend roast, can I listen in?" Kathody asked.

"Of course!" Bubbles said.

"Cool! Finally, you do something I _like._ "

They once again disappeared off screen, all professors barring Rose. The professor of plants silently smiled as she looked over at the end her powerful sisters walked off to, slightly leaning against the screen of the pack.

Dipper and Mabel both took deep breaths at they looked at the fruits of the group's efforts, both lying back and taking the free time to stare at the flashing, multi-colored numerical data that they passed under. Soos, also observing the screen, only remarked with a "Dude, deep." Wendy only groaned.

"I think you're getting a little too attached to these things." She said. "Remember, we were gonna come up with nicknames to tell me apart from the next one."

And they did. A number of potential names cropped up for the duration of the trip, even after they passed into the spring green cord's interior and were close on their way to re-entering the macro scale. Matching static covered the screen, and from the inside, Rose once again leaned her whole weight against the screen.

"The promises mean nothing..." She said, keeping a palm on hold. "They can say that, but in the heat of the battle..."

"Are you okay?" Asked Dian.

"I am the professor that was here the second-longest, so I can say that she did this for every. Single. DOMAIN!" Kathody broke in. "So... I would say, no."

Rose ignored both professors. She simply drew in another breath.

"Just six more left." she told herself, "Six more times I have to worry about this. But we are in the endgame now. I have to worry more than ever before."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Arc 2 is _finally_ over! And this managed to brake 8's record for the longest chapter in the fic! Well, let me just say that I do _not_ want to write any single, longer chpater. In fact, I kind of realized towards the end of this arc that I spent a little _too_ much time doing the 'world building' for the domains. I guess that could be Arc 2's 'gimmick' of sorts, though, a bigger focus on world building. I'm really not that proud of this in hindsight, given how awkward it's divided between the hijackers and how I think Alma's the real plot-mover. I tried not to make the other three filler by focusing a little more on making them Mabel's steps to recovering from Sonia's betrayal. But... yeah, I guess you could say that when it came to world building too much, I hit _rock bottom_ with this chapter! Get it? Cave joke? Meh, nevermind.

Anyway, for the first and likely only time since the story began, there may be two chapters per month. Not only did I want to do this at some point to make up for May lacking an update, but the 22nd marks the anniversary of when "Soos and the Real Girl" first aired, so... I felt like making that a goal to publishing a chapter. I'm already pretty far into chapter 10 as of now (and I even started a little on 11!), so I think that goal is possible within the time span of over two weeks between now and then.

Arc 3 is planned to be where things get real. And not just within the last chapter, there is going to be a steady stream of little twists and turns and mood changes thrown all over the place. It's the part of the story that I've, frankly, been excited about getting to since I was writing the first chapter. If not sooner, when I planned this fic to be the way it is now instead of going by earlier concepts. (More on that on the ending notes to chapter 13.)

I felt like this was worth noting, but the appearances of the two duelers actually described (except for the bloomer battle-garment - and yes, they are a kind of bloomer) were based appearance-wise on "topless" characters. I used quotes because the second is based on that 'Other Girls' from the joke-post-turned-Tumblr meme dubbed "Creamsicle." I personally think it's obvious that she's wearing some kind of black top, but people have interpreted that as a censor bar. The first is based on Paimon from _Magi: Labrynth of Magic_ , a thing I watch on rare occasions. (She's uncensored and that show somehow gets away with a TV-14 rating? And I thought Pyronica's butt pushed the Y7 rating of _Gravity Falls_.) I also planned on having Stupidella from this obscure webgame of the same name worked in there, but the chapter was dragging on as-is. Still, I'm making it part of the fic's canon. Dueler number three looks like a .GIFfany-ish version of Stupidella. Heck, complete with smoking. Anyway, I'm not pointing out other references because I feel they are a bit more obvious. I'm sure I don't need to tell anyon reading this what the mushroom hijacker references, do I?


	10. Green With Lust

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 10: Green With Lust**

 **Beginning AN:**

So despite how I said that this chapter is where the other T-rated reasons will start coming in, and its title, this isn't actually gonna get really dirty or anything.

...That's all I want to say about this chapter right now, other than one last reminder that it will be a _doozy._

* * *

For the first time since Domain 2, the group was greeted with the back of a building after being zipped out of the Wire.

And the contrast between those two experiences was noteworthy in of its own. Kathody's 'haunted mansion' was a stolen structure out in the dry desert, with its dark, rotting wood standing out in hindsight when compared to the organized, angular metal that made up most of the future domains. And this one was no exception. Jade green formed a _very_ wide, _very_ tall wall out by what was otherwise a relaxed grass plain. It was absolutely no surprise that the pack's screen was once again blocked by static matching with the colors of the metal.

"Why don't these Wires send us to the _beginning_?" Asked Dipper. "Why does it always have to be at the end of something or in a really far-off place? If these are supposed to be private locations, wouldn't it make more sense if you already had access to the domains that the cards will just send you right in?"

A crowd of cheers errupted from this building. Dipper groaned, only lightening up when he saw the leftmost corner of the structure.

Despite being even more of a sign that he didn't have as far to move, he reacted to the rope dropping down right by him with confusion at first.

"HEY! Humans! Up here!"

The quad looked up, getting their own first view of Professor Wendy. To recap: purple skin, spring green hair and eyes, ball of wind kept in her hair, black crop top, shorts, and shoes.

"Dipper, Soos, the rope! Mabel, Human Wendy, just wait right here while I look for something else to send you."

Dipper sighed. "Look, training or no, rope climbing has never been my thing. I don't think it's been anyone's thing. Can't we just wait for whatever you're sending-"

"I think she means like this." Soos answered, already having his feet pressed up against the wall.

"Yeah, that makes more sense." Added (Not-Professor) Wendy, easily four times the distance above Soos already. At the top, the professor crossed her arms.

"Human Wendy, that was intended for the guys. And yes Dipper, you were right, you needed to climb the rope by itself. Like in gym class. None of that _'action movie'_ garbage, either."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Asked the other Wendy.

"It means I'm training the guys to be sports pros for our upcoming match. You and Mabel don't need any of that sports pro crap to succeed, just take up what they teach you at school. You ladies best be better suited cheerleading to keep us up, or something. Yeah, cheerleaders helping the men, the group that _really_ matters, out. It's implied right there in _King of the Hill_. S8E13, 'Cheer Factor.' Well, I'll still allow you to climb. If only to hurry up with the inevidable."

Meanwhile, the human Wendy cringed, letting out a groan that would have been alarming if not for the AI Wendy's comments practically leading on to it.

"Oh my gosh. I _knew_ we were gonna run into one of these eventually." She said, stopping her climb to rest her head down.

"I think I already know the answer to this," Dipper replied, "but one of what?"

"Some kind of really backwards sexist. I mean, nine copies who don't even talk about gender, for people that were made as a video game somewhere in the 1990s, almost sounds too weird to be true, right? I wasn't expecting something like that from .GIFfany of all people. And then this one comes along, we barely even knew her for ten seconds and she's already spewing on about how guys are so much better than girls and it's just _augh_."

"I never said that!" The professor attempted to defend, just as the first Wendy made it on top. Looking around, she found that this appeared to be a solid roof. The entire domain looked like a single, voluminous cube from where she stood. Which did not explain the cheers coming from inside. "In fact, I am physically skilled enough to beat all of you right here! I am a woman who single-handedly made a deal to set up her business crafting high pollutant-eating, wind-powered and ectoplasm-powered transportation technology! I'm already burried over my head in flying cars, jet packs, space suits - you name it! Although that's mainly because the cars are really tall. Some are tall enough to go _over_ my head in a lot of cases. Anyway, what I said was, when it comes to the glory of sports, _real_ sports are the ones done by men! S3E24, 'Take Me Out of the Ball Game.'"

Rolling her eyes, the human Wendy began marching over to her. "Bring it! We'll take you down like we did with all the other professors!"

Then she held her hands up, closed her eyes, and smirked.

"Alas, though." The jader of the Wendys said. "I may have the physical skills needed to beat you, but I know that defeat by your hands is inevitable. Because you're... humans. And humans are just so dang special."

A tear dropped from her eye as she said this. Smirking, she wiped it away.

"Where's the card?" Asked the redder Wendy. "Don't tell me we have to go around this box you call a home fetching it from four or three different other places before we have a showdown with you."

"Oh. Right. See, that's more of a Four Friends thing. I see why y'all think that, after going through about four domains in a row with that same ol' same ol'. I'd follow 'em too but that's probably not what Hank Hill would approve of. He'd approve of simplicity, and cutting right to the point. But... I can't say I can resist making an intro for myself."

She did a series of back-flips, making clear she was out of the range of the Illegal Prime Neutralizer.

"NOW! You are probably wondering, where are we?"

"Actually, we're somewhere in New Delhi, even if this... doesn't really look like a city." Said Dipper. "Searah leaked all of the locations. And after that, we're going to Canada."

Professor Wendy sighed. "Fine. Give away our location. Anyway, you are probably wondering, why did I pick New Delhi?"

"I think it had to do less with the location and more with the environment around it? The copy that likes deserts picked the largest desert on the planet, the one that wanted to make a cave fort picked the largest cave in the world, and so on."

"Yep! I picked India because of one word: MONSOONS! When the winds hit, they hit HARD! In fact, one is hitting us right now!"

Whipping out a cell phone, she appeared to tap furiously at its keys. It was here that she pointed up, and despite the group's previous rope-climbing, this was the first time they noticed an oddity about the sky. There was something above, collecting a huge amount of water that poured from a cloudy sky. As pieces and water trails began moving around, as well as structures in the air, it became more apparent that this was a quartet of jetpack-wearing AIs holding a massive sheet of glass over the entire domain. As this was moved away, a complete shower made its journey until the entire roof of the building was blanketed with rain.

"What better way to announce my role as canon fodder than to do it by showing off my absolute boldness?" The professor continued. "A proud _King of the Hill_ fan, out in the middle of the harsh rain-drawing winds of South Asia!"

With that, she lept a fairly good distance into the air - enough to look like she could almost touch one of the graying clouds above. Not that this could be seen by any of the humans, but she withdrew a sword from her Indexitizer. Which she promptly held up in the air, watching as expanded to the length of a two-story house, with the rest of the dimensions expanding to give it a reasonable upscaled sword-like shape.

"I AM PROFESSOR WENDY!" Her voice boomed as though it was a thunder strike. "SYLPH OF THE SEVEN SEAS, THE SERPENTINE STORM-SOURCING SORCERESS! Well, actually. My character is only 'loosely' a 'sylph.' I am not really tied to the seven seas. There is hardly anything snake-like about me. I do have a kind of magic, but I would not consider myself a sorceress like Professor Kathody might. And I do not directly generate storms, but I can kind of control them. I just wanted to use a lot of 'S' sounds in a row."

She said all of that while remaining in the air. Then, with no other warning, she performed a flip, bringing her weapon to cleave the roof. Somehow, thanks to a flip within an eye blink's worth of time, the roof was cut near-horizontally, popping up into the air while the band of four was swept off their feet.

The angular slice resulted in this domain being seen by the group from above first. It appeared to be a large convention, most of it being limited to a single room (aside from some bathrooms in the corner of the gang's eye). It took a fall on an amazingly soft mattress before the rest of this region was registered by them. On the side to the left was another mass number of copies, grilling with gas grills even after the rain hit them like a convoy of trucks. Speaking of trucks, looking closer towards the second wall over at the far end revealed a growing complex of .GIFfany clones assembling or working on jade-and-white trucks or cars or even some sort of space suits. Some worked on jetpacks, a large cluster in particular looked over at a half-constructed train. Towards the third side of the room was another swarm of student copies, all decked in American football gear, all glaring at the human group. The fourth wall, the one right behind the point the gang fell on... finally, a group of .GIFfanys that spent their time in screens again. The fourth and final end of the room had a huge crowd of them stared on through several stacks of pink-colored TVs that nearly made up that entire wall. Several .GIFfanys were all crammed on just one screen, out of what looked like over hundreds in a neat, rectangular pile. Sprinkling the corners were even more of them, seated at desks and typing on computers. Though a small number of them seemed preoccupied on those same odd lime green-edged hand mirrors rather than doing anything computer-related. As for wardrobe, aside from the American football players, all of them had on some sort of palette-swapped _King of the Hill_ cosplay. Mostly Hanks, Luannes as with Professor Wendy, Peggys, Bobbys, or Dales. A few went as more obscure characters, such as Junichiro or Anthony Page. Not that any of the main group could recognize the cast from said show.

Professor Wendy dropped down right in front of the team, on yet another mattress in what was soon revealed to be a pretty large pileup of.

"Like the mattress idea? I wanted y'all to have a cool landin', but not die or anything. Anyway, this here's the finest, most American place you'll see in all of... um, India. I see you've met the cheerleaders over by the TVs, our truck repair team and crafters, that's our football group - _**AMERICAN**_ football, not that 'soccer' crap - and finally, our Texas state grill-off. Now, Dipper, Mabel, you are from California, correct?"

"Yeah." Dipper replied.

"Screw you! California sucks!"

Either most or all of the copies replied in unison, curving their fingers into resembling horns: " _GOOOO LONGHORNS!_ "

"Also, the Cowboys!" Shouted a lone copy by herself, which caused a series of mumbles of agreement.

Wendy sighed. "I don't think we've been here for ten minutes and this is already my _least_ favorite domain. And that hippie place in the middle of the Grand Canyon set that bar _really_ low. Can we just get out before you make me feel ashamed to like meat, violence, my country, and my own first name?"

"I can only imagine how you feel about Professor Sandy." Said the other Wendy, stepping her way ever-so closer to the group. "Hippies. Heh. Rose is equally terrible. And forget about everyone else! An 'artist?' 'Musician?' Some fancy chemical 'doctor?' Urgh, these people are all wasting their lives."

"Ew, and she insults the other professors too! Even the nicest ones!" Mabel said. Giving a thumbs-down, she shouted "Booooo!"

The professor folded her arms and chuckled. "Again, you two don't really matter towards leaving. Oh, and that grill group? The truck workers? They're harmless. I ain't gonna send you on a trip through all our jobs like those Four Friends did. No, the focus here is my football players. Dipper! Soos! Get up, stand up, and get over here!"

Once they finally did begin moving towards the crowd of players, Wendy and Mabel were both quick to join them by their sides.

"We kind of silently agreed that splitting up during the Gifocalypse is a terrible idea." Said Wendy. "It sounded like a fast way to get killed back when we thought they were way more harmful than they really are, and right now it's starting to sound like that again."

"Yeah, no, sorry. You ladies have been through a lot already. And it'd be a shame if you entered this fight all for nothin'. Becides, you know Dipper and Soos are almost destined to win our li'l football match. So, sorry to shove you off to the sidelines like this, but..."

She threw streams of electricity (unsurprisingly, these matched her 'color' as well) into the air itself. Which ended up kicking wind, pushing on Wendy and Mabel to the point where they were sent flying off the series of mattresses. Each of them, however, ended up being pushed to a lawn chair, said chairs only slightly being leaned back from the force of the wind before returning forward again.

Several copies immediately rushed up to restrain the two, at least four holding each teammate back from trying to leave their lawn chair. This number only counted the .GIFfany copies that were _touching_ them, as a mob of others were awaiting a breakout from them.

"Stay here!" One of them said. "Watch and enjoy the show!"

"What show?" Asked Wendy.

She got an indirect answer when a football was placed directly into Dipper's hands, both him and Soos still on the field of mattresses. He stared at the ball, then looked at the army of sports gear-clad .GIFfanys, then frowned. Hard.

Both of them started taking steps backwards as the .GIFfany brigade charged towards them. This was something Wendy the professor appeared to take offense to, shaking her fist at the humans.

"Hey! S5E7, 'What Makes Bobby Run?' You just don't _get it,_ do you? Women may run away all the time, but that is something men _never_ do! Either fight the hopelessly outmatching enemy and die like a hero, or warm up to tradition and take the ol' fashioned pounding! Of course I know you'll do the latter! You're the stars! You'll find the right way to live!"

"I can't even see the _back end_ of that crowd!" Shouted Dipper. "And it looks like _more_ of them are coming in the door! Do you really think we can beat them all at once?"

"No, I expect you to show how grown up you are by taking the whoopin' from all of them! I just told you that!"

"Won't _that_ kill us too?"

"Eh... Dove isn't big on killing, so no. But ya' know, I don't really know what she thinks about hospitalization. Maybe some rough scrapes or a broken bone or two would really help you grow better."

"Okay, that's enough!" The Wendy on the Shack's side cried. "I'm getting us out of here!"

She gave her own lawn-chair a hard elbow right to the middle, causing enough of it to break to ensure that she could drop down and out of the copies' grip. Taking that window of time where the copies were too stunned at her escape by going _below_ them, she pressed at her hands on the ground to help slide herself out of the AI field. The rain lubricating the metal helped, as did Professor Wendy's followers not placing a thick crowd of themselves in _front_ of the seats (despite sounding like a more obvious solution). Wendy Corduroy was out and on the move, the other copies trampling over themselves to try to catch her while also not laying a finger on Mabel.

Soos and Dipper took off into a full run once the football players showed the first sign of doing the same. They did notice Wendy's escape, but all of them were locked on the party of two.

Wendy managed to get her own crowd to back off by taking in a few of them with the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. Not even looking, she faced it behind her and flipped it on, capturing a mass around Mabel and convincing the majority that was the rest of them to look for another manuver. She dashed over to the allies under pursuit, in hopes that-

Corduroy was too late. By the time she prepared to fire at the sports team, Dipper was already being tackled by over half a dozen football players. Soos stopped to charge at them, desperate to dig him out. And this was when he was taken down too. A growing number of .GIFfany copies piled on the two further, until Soos and Dipper were burried under a small hill of dating sim characters.

"Alright players!" Professor Wendy... for lack of better term, 'coached' to them. "Let's see some bloodshed! Pummel 'em! Show 'em how to treat a lady with respect, let alone a lady that was only looking for love!"

Thankfully, in spite of the heavy sports gear and the rain, the Illegal Prime Neutralizer was able to lift the mass off of the duo while keeping Dipper and Soos themselves unharmed. Right at the moment when one lawn chair-guarding copy grabbed a hold of the pack straight from Wendy's hands (giving her an angry look to boot as she tried to snatch it back), the other Wendy began blowing on her whistle.

"Okay, capturing of the football team is involved! And I can see that you don't wanna play sports (you Satan-spawn), you just want to move on. You know what? I'm just gonna play it like Dove told me Sonia did. And take matters into my own hands. You girls can get back to blogging about the masterpiece of television that is _King of the Hill_ or continue building amazing transportation technology or grill the best meat. I'm gonna cut STRAIGHT TO THE POINT! STORMS AROUND ME - also you girls can stop closing around Mabel - GATHER!"

Shooting spring green electricity into the sky, she pulled several clouds straight from the heavens and to her location. The rain drew even heavier as these clouds began swirling, joined by the debris of anything unfortunate enough to be within range. The group, now freed, backed up as her gray air-sculpture began taking a more funnel-like appearance. She lept into this vortex, transforming into jade-colored lightning which spread its way through the figure. Much like Searah's Main Possession, a sort of "skeleton" of thin electricity matching her hair color appeared to form the shape inside of it. She made this form grow a face, but it was not like her own. To most of the group, it was someone they did not recognize. However, anyone familiar with _King of the Hill_ would be able to identify the mug as that of Luanne Platter's.

"A _TORNDADO?_ " Dipper shouted. He had to, as this possession began picking up both speed and the sound of whirling around him. "How are we supposed to beat a _LIVE-SIZED TORNADO?_ "

" _Youuuu shoot iiiiit!_ " Professor Wendy's voice was still heard from the twister, now booming more than ever. "Again, S8E13, 'Cheer Factor!' Now, we may have power, numbers, and supernatural forces on our side! And I may have this awesome way of possessing air, then turning it into a tornado and kind of calling tornados my Main Possession! But you humans, you're special. You have something we don't. Guts. Paraphrased from S4E3, 'Bills are Made to be Broken.' I can't wait to see how you'll take down _this_ monster of the week! Now, let's fight! Tornado... pickup!"

It was here that her Main Possession began behaving more like a realistic tornado. Namely, it began sucking in things well around a mile radius outside of the funnel cloud. The mattress field, televisions (with those .GIFfany copies still inside of them), most of the vehicles being worked on, grills... the only things that were not immediately sent spinning were the walls of the domain itself, its decapitated roof, and the on-foot .GIFfany copies. The latter of which still braced themselves, as though they were 'just' hit by a 'slightly powerful' breeze instead of a roaring artificial variation of a devastating natural disaster.

And this included Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy.

Of course, no need to worry about the .GIFfanys inside the flying televisions. They all zipped out of there, trying to swim their way through the air. One Hank Hill cosplayer in particular grabbed hold of a telephone pole, and started laughing maniacally:

"YES! THANK YOU WENDY! I HAVE BEEN DREAMING ABOUT THIS!" Her glasses instantly flew off, belt beginning to undo itself. "I CAN FINALLY LIVE OUT A RE-CREATION OF MY FAVORITE EPISODE! BEING MADE NAKED AND COVERING MY 'SHAME' WITH A CACTUS, HERE I COME! Wait, Jaypresga, if you can hear me, do we have cacti around?"

It felt like seconds after that, but the band of four were knocked into some kind of large, cardboard box floating through the wind. Scribbed on it with a jade marker, it read _PENALTY BOX._ Gray metallic bars instantly shut the four of them in, which was by no means shelter for the storm. Thankfully, the storm itself declinded in quality, and the group found themselves being settled on the ground by a cluster of AIs takng a hold of the box. Aformentioned .GIFfany copies were emitting some kind of static which slowed down their fall, one of them keeping a firm hold on the AI Pack.

After touching the ground, the professor of wind hopped out of the tornado, causing it to go away completely. She looked on at the box with her head tilted in confusion, staring at it for a good few seconds.

"That was... it?" She asked. "Where's the fight back? Where's the outsmarting? Where's the triumph? You just... lost? That penalty box wasn't even meant to be a real prison! It's just a joke!"

And Professor Wendy's reactions went from confusion to dread as several fireworks began going off above them. While there were smaller bursts in all sorts of colors of the rainbow, the most common color and the color of the largest ones were pink. An all-too familiar shade of pink.

As soon as the televisions began making their way back down, .GIFfany herself lept out of one of them. Her arms were pumped into the air, and in spite of her cheery expression, she prefixed what she was about to say with a sigh.

"Congratulations Wendy, you did it!"

Wendy Corduroy, on the other hand, crossed her fingers, saying "Please be talking about me, please be talking about me..."

Unfortunately, .GIFfany swiftly removed any ambiguity of her previous statement with the immediate follow-up. "Professor Wendy, subject piloting. Serial Number 0521355. As the winner of the Gifocalypse, you now get your wish. The Construction Site shall be transformed into your personal utopia, a lush landscape of jade green giffinium metal and fresh, pure air. A mass manufacturing unit for your flying super transportation, and a fanclub where all can sit back and enjoy _King of the Hill_ fan derivatives. Wendy, professor of wind, I actually like you as a fellow .GIFfany copy. Because you do not mess around. If _all_ of the copies had just used their fullest strength and went for a clean, gimmickless capture, these vile humans would not have made it past Rose's domain."

"Oh, we figured that out a long time ago!" Remarked Soos as he tried grinding his Sizzcorra-given sword against the bars keeping the quartet inside. They actually did not appear to be made out of giffinium, but they still held up quite a resistance. Wendy attempted to slice her way out through the sides, just to find brown paint getting chipped off. Revealing that the _box_ was made out of jade giffinium, painted and even bent to resemble cardboard. "Gideon would have beaten us too if it wasn't for Mabel's new frog friends coming in to save the day."

The leading professor behind the entire Gifocalypse herself then walked straight up to the bars, leaned against them, and licked her lips. "And now... for my end of the favor... I can _finally_ be alone with Soos. If any other copy tries to bug me, I can tell them that I at least tried to make them happy. To tell you the truth, Wendy, I am glad you won. Because I hate all of the professors after you. And I am certain that, at the absolute least, Dove would have been able to win.

"Soos, I am going to find another place for us to express our love! Together, we can-"

"This doesn't... _feel_ right." Said the air professor. "I'm not supposed to win. I'm just... episodic fodder! A monster of the week! They'll beat me, because that's how human protagonists work, and never even see me again! That's how it goes! That's my destiny! Heck, I was ready to _die_ because of them, and I was starting to worry that what you said about the Illegal Prime Neutralizer was a lie!"

"Wendy, are you saying you..." Any remote happiness, genuine or acted, from .GIFfany thanks to Professor Wendy's victory began falling. "Do not want the Construction Site? I guess you really are an idiot, just like the rest. Well, I wanted to end this as soon as I could, but I guess having the whole, finished project that is currently that Site is not so bad. Even if I have to wait any longer. I mean, being captured means you have to wait before you can contact with your player, from what I understand."

"I'm sayin' I thought this was it for me! But winning, that... that... I thought I knew how the world worked, but I didn't! We're _not_ the through-and-done quirky antagonists of an action serial!"

"Of course we are not. This is real life. Grimy, sun-lit, disgusting real life."

"Well, _I need answers!_ M-maybe, if the script of their game isn't right, the script of our's isn't either! What if I break the script!"

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I want to find a compromise! How will I help them win, how will I... wait."

The spring-haired professor reached into her inventory, took out a chartreuse-colored card, and began staring at it. .GIFfany started shivering - and not because of the warm rain, either - her right eye began twitching. With a few twirls of her fingers, all copies becides her _immediately_ got the blinking wrist bands. Professor Wendy was quick to tear hers off, but the rest were sent towards space. Thankfully, the .GIFfany-capturing vacuum fell to the floor instead of being zipped with them.

"Don't even think about it."

" _She_ might know the answers. In fact, screw the Gifocalypse! I'm going over to _her_ for everything! I mean, those copies with the mirrors are happy! I can be happy too!"

"No, _I_ aim to create happyness! She... she makes poison! I mean, not literal poison, that was part of Dian's goal, but-"

"I ALREADY MADE UP MY MIND, 'BOSS!' I'm going to Domain 11 for answers, and leaving the humans _and you_ behind!"

Dipper bolted up to and gave a firm grip on the bars of his miniature prison. "Wait! If you leave, would that mean we're stuck here?!"

"It would." .GIFfany replied. With another deep breath, she shot electricity at the bars of the penalty box, forming a sort of pink electric rope around all of them. She then ripped every last one of the metal poles right from their even-more-metallic 'cardboard' and pointed at the professor. "Go after them. I will help."

And following that, she shot a similar energy pseudo-rope at Professor Wendy herself.

"Grab that key card! NOW!" .GIFfany yelled.

In spite of being in hold, Professor Wendy looked to be breaking out of the lasso. Fast. Mabel was the first to run up to her and make a leaping grab, keeping a tight hold on her left arm. Dipper did the same, reaching around her right side to try to yank the card from her hands. By the time Soos dove down to grab hold of her legs, she had already sent a wave of spring green electricity, firing backwards through .GIFfany's beam. The air professor's own stream instantly hit the leading copy, sending her flying back to the television-wall of the domain. She lied there, seemingly knocked out, with a massive semi-circle shaped dent in the giffinium behind her.

The AI Wendy took off flying just as the human Wendy finished the chain, leaping on to the back of her neck with the AI pack once again in her hands. Due to the short distance of her flying up, then going back down over and out of the domain, this was more of a leap than a flight. But it was still a struggle to stay on. Professor Wendy landed a good several meters away from the Wire yet charged at it, the combined weight of the four Mystery Shack employees doing nothing to slow her down. Seconds later, Professor Wendy let out a fit of laughter as she stuck the next card into the jade-colored slot. Another clear dome, another group beamed inside.

* * *

A single shake from the jade-haired .GIFfany knocked the entire party off. Dipper took advantage of the near-weightlessness of the Wire's inside to grip, then wrestle with Professor Wendy over the next card. Everyone else swam closer to the pair as the familiar scanning system worked its way on the peridot-colored card. Just as the Mystery Shack Wendy _finally_ became the one to yank it from the copy that shared her name, a chartreuse bubble formed around the latter, pushing the party out. She gave them all a wave and a grin as the bubble was shot further down the transportation system.

A four-way sigh of relief followed as the scanner began re-reading the chartreuse card. Once again, the party had their own bubble, and was off down into the bridging pathway.

It was here that Mabel felt something in her stomach.

"Guys..." she said, "I just realized... we don't know _anything_ about the next professor. We knew the names of _everyone_ before we went to where they lived. But her? All we know is the color and that .GIFfany hates her. And .GIFfany seems to hate _everyone._ "

Soos flipped over the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, just as the light at the end of this Wire's cord was coming into view-

Static. Spring green static. It cleared for a brief moment as Professor Wendy's bubble passed into the central hub (revealing a glimpse of AI-Wendy's followers banging at the glass), but resumed as they passed into the central point.

"Well." Said Dipper. "And Rose can't help. Oh well, we're heading into the unknown here. Kind of just like old times." he finished this with a smirk.

Mabel smirked back at him.

"Just like old times."

As they gazed out at the nearby sphere heading in the same direction-

"Okay, wait." Wendy said. "We should spend this time to come up with nicknames to tell me apart from that... _thing._ Everyone, think of another nickname, and we'll vote on it. I'm down for Not-Wendy."

* * *

For what was, according to Searah's message, the Yukon, the destination was oddly warm. And grassy.

The group was greeted with a large blanket of grass nearly matching the color of the Wire they were ejected from, out in a wide field. No real sight of Professor Wendy. There was, however, a massive factory in the distance. Three key things alerted the group that this was where the next domain was. The first was that its coloration, again, matched that of everything else associated with the mystery professor. Including the new set of static that had since replaced the jade static completely. The second was how, even from a distance, it was easy to tell that the reason _why_ it was such a shining lime was because it was made out of giffinium. The third, and closest, was that a simple head-turn revealed a monorail car. It was on a lone track, leading straight into the factory. Well, it likely did. Somewhere along the lines, the path was obscured by a thick cluster of trees. A single .GIFfany copy stood by the monorail, observing herself in a mirror. She had on a set of thick, pink pajamas, complete with bunny slippers. Her cyan hair and dark green eyes were a dead giveaway that she was not the professor of that location.

"Oh, hello!" She said without looking away from her reflection. "The Boss has been expecting you! Please make your way into the unmanned monorail. A simple flip-switch will take you to the Yukon Mirror Factory. This is a one-time free deal because of the Gifocalypse event. Future visitors will have to pay a small fee before using what will become one of many cars."

Looking around for any other sign of any other .GIFfanys first, the group began making their way in. Just as Wendy was about to enter last, the AI continued:

"Oh. And Wendy was spotted entering here a minute ago. She flew off, heading towards The Boss's office. If there is a way you can find out what she is doing, please, report it to The Boss via file form 871 Delta Spring."

"So is your professor just called The Boss?" Dipper asked her. The copy blinked in response, still refusing to look at them.

"The Boss? The Boss has been expecting you! Please make your way to the unmanned monorail. A simple flip-switch will take you to the Yukon Mirror Factory. This is a one-time free deal..."

Shuddering, Wendy flipped the aformentioned switch near the front of the car. One low hum later, and it was already barrelling its way through the Canadian tundra. In spite of the sheer speed indicating that this ride should be short, the seats provided a good amount of comfort. Well, better than the awkward curvature of the bubbles, which always provided that uneasy feeling of being able to break at any moment and raising the question as to what would happen if they _did_ break. Especially in the open central area linking all Wires.

After passing the trees, the group got a better idea as to why the Wire was not placed closer to the domain. Namely, beyond those trees led to a cliff. And the domain was _floating_ above said cliff.

This factory was roughly the size of a city, with an underside made of oddly-stacked giant cubes of giffinium that played some role in keeping it afloat. Cylinders stretched to the sky and gave out streams of black smoke. Below them was an uncountable number of rectangular buildings, close in proximity, arranged with perfect, sharp edges to their shape. Most notably was that the first part of the domain the monorail fed into was not genuine land itself. Rather, a bath of glowing, orange liquid. The monorail did fly into solid metal shortly after, a wide, flat surface which served as an entrance station. The trail that this vehicle had blown itself down was then closed by a lowing, house-sized X made of chartreuse giffinium. Of course, that in of itself would be a bad barrier that anyone of a reasonable size could simply duck past, so there was also a mesh fence keeping people from going into the pool. Upon stepping out, the gang began calling through the industrial setting:

"Not-Wendy!" was Wendy's shout.

"Jadehead!" called Mabel.

".GIFfany Number 0521355!" Soos called. "Wow, you're right, that is a mouthful."

"W _iihhhh_ ndy!" Dipper still tried to get the hang of pronouncing that in a different manner from that of his friend's name.

Three nightgown-clad .GIFfany copies, one of which was in a nightcap, moved their way towards the gang.

"Hello there!" One of them said. "You must be looking for the Boss. She is in the Gamma Sector. You are at the Radio Sector, the greeting area at the opposite end. No need to worry, I can show you the way to a monorail sending right over there!"

Wendy let out a particularly exasperated sigh. " _Thank you._ Normally I would complain about sitting in a bubble ride, getting picked up by a tornado, sitting in _another_ bubble ride less than an hour later, then sitting in a monorail just to go on another monorail." she began counting the professors off her hand. "But Leona. Sonia. Dian. For all three of them, we had to explore every nook and cranny of their 'domains.'"

"It would at least take 24 hours to explore every part of this domain." Said another copy. "It is the second-largest of the domain, behind .GIFfany's Construction Site. It is eight hundred square kilometers in land area. Larger than New York. Our goal by next week is to be larger than Sitka, Alaska..."

"Yeah, fine, just direct us to the station. We need to talk with your 'Boss.'"

It was hardly much of a walk. The station was right by this factory's entrance. The one with the night cap, oddly, seemed to be the one running the station, as she lept inside the metal and trailed over until she was behind the desk. She un-possessed the walls with a smile.

"You have a Gifocalypse Makeover Discount! Please, take this free ride straight to the Gamma Sector!"

The car was practically identical to the one leading into this factory, with a major difference being the large, electronic box hanging from the ceiling. Front, back, left, and right, the sides of it all had screens. And once the monorail began moving, all four screens clicked on to the same video display.

"Our records indicate that you do not yet know about the purpose of the Domain 11-brand specialized mirror creations!" Another .GIFfany voice was heard as the car departed the station. Here, more copies were seen wandering the not-quite-streets of the factory/city hyrbid. Once again picking up a theme in attire, many of them had some sort of sleepwear or underwear. In spite of the latter category, there were no true bras among them. Some of them got creative and covered themselves with wrapping, stickers or the like, others were as free as, to name just one group example, Peachaulinsalinaisy's 100 duelers. A particularly tiny number had more festive, themed costumes. Others had wings, which clearly did not look to be part of any sort of outfit. "This is a short explanatory video of the wonders of mirrors!"

They all showed the same, heavily stylized display. Conveyor belts carrying chartreuse giffinium, simplified depictions of machines pressing them in the shape of frames.

"The frames of our mirror units are made out of the finest giffinium!" glowing orange liquid was shown getting pressed and poured into the crafted outlines. "The reflective silver, freshly melted in a pool bordering the factory. But these are no ordinary mirrors."

It displayed a simplified version of the Mirror Factory itself. Green-yellow buildings and cooling towers, the latter spewing out smoke.

"We also design processing chips and super powerful mini-computers, which are packed deeply within and interwoven with the silver after it is melted into the liquid pool! Throw in a recorded, possibly inter-dimensional psychic enabler, and you have the end result."

A simplifation of this now-familiar type of mirror appeared on the center of each screen. To the left, a white stick figure with no outstanding features (other than an oddly overly square-like head compared to .GIFfany's previous stick figures). To the right, a pink one with .GIFfany's hair style and bow. A segmented line was formed dash by dash, connecting the left figure's head with the mirror as it 'looked' in that direction. The line disappeared, being replaced with a blinking red X.

"When a human looks into a special mirror produced from this factory, they can only see themselves. It works like a regular mirror. We are currently trying to find a way to fix this, so do not worry. When one of us .GIFfanys looks into it..."

Now a dashed line connected the pink figure with the object. A green check appeared, and a thought bubble faded into view, covering both the mirror and the figure on the left.

"The mirror forms a link with her thought waves and displays a view to her innermost desires. A look into an alternate world that they can plug themselves into. It is like a customized fantasy movie, showing whatever they want. Even if she was not aware of it. Our mirrors are intended to bring out the dreams of a copy's subconcious mind. And dream-like is our ultimate goal. Dreams to view, dreams to touch. Dreams to inspire one to follow their destiny. And dreams to sink a player into never wanting to wake up. But of course, sadly, they will wake up. And that will, in turn, lead to life experiences which will inspire more fuel for more dreams.

"As the sectors go on from Radio to Gamma, they become shorter in land area, with Gamma only consisting of the single tower where the Boss is at. Radio is a sort of introductory sector, where copies run radio tunes that play through this domain and Domain 12. Soon, we will export radios to all other domains. But due to the Silence, this may have to wait while Dove and .GIFfany sort everything out. Radio is also where most of the copies who have not yet grasped the ways of size-shifting reside."

"Size-shifting?" Dipper asked.

The head of another AI peeked out of the four-sided television, which went black shortly after. "Yes. Size-shifting. You will see as we approach the Micro Sector."

She also un-possessed a bare hand, pointing at something to the front of the passenger's section. A display, with seven letters appearing to be arranged in lights. Glowing red was the letter R, while the M, I, V, U, X, and G remained unlit.

"Sorry for the primitive type of display. We were hoping to switch to a pixel-based display once we sort-out the whole 'Gifocalypse' thing."

The R darkened, while the M lit up in orange light.

"Ah! Just like that, we are in the Micro Sector! The name has little to do with size, instead, where we have the largest concentration of microwaves ovens to heat up food. This is ironic; the type of food we mostly make is sweets and sugars, and those are usually not microwaved."

From there, the trip kind of blurred together. Looking outside revealed what this copy had previously said about AI sizes: the lands of this sector onwards had roamers ranging from house-sized recolored AIs stomping around to .GIFfanys barely larger than a quarter (not that _those_ were exactly visible from a distance through the fast-moving train). The sightings were similar as the M dimmed, and the I lit up in yellow. The outside scenery, with the variety in .GIFfany sizes, remained the same.

"This is the Infrared Sector, where we develop heat sensing-based technology. For humans. We already had that, even back in our AI forms. After all, gotta find out quickly if our players are hiding behind walls, right?"

Even less time, the I dimmed. The V lit up green.

"Visible Sector! With color-coded statues dedicated to all of the professors and other copies of note! It is our second-largest knowledge center of all copies, bested only by the as-of-now inaccessable Great Library of the Construction Site!"

Wendy began crossing her fingers. She mentally said _Bye!_ to the green V, and _Hello!_ to the cyan U...

"Ultraviolet Sector! Our place full of tanning equipment! Again, I would like to remind you that all sectors have a large number of mirror-production areas. We do not want to be distracted. The mirrors are amazing."

Dipper looked down at a paper he wrote. Based on the time it took to get through the first two sectors... then the next two... there was a blatant (to him) logarithmic pattern. So, in just one more minute, they should be in the X-

And of course a crash happened, shaking the entire monorail car.

"Hold on," said the television-AI, "Let me examine this. There appears to be an obstruction on the roadway."

She zipped out, revealing that her only 'attire' was a tiny red thong with rose-like decorations on the sides.

"Woah! You too?" Asked Dipper.

She gave a dismissing wave as she worked her way to the front. "Hey, this is what I actually sleep in. We can only dress down significantly if it is a legitimate form of sleepwear for us. If I would not sleep without wearing something more, than I would not be allowed to wander this domain like this. The Boss is actually kind of strict in that way, for some reason."

The copy turned into light blue electricity to phase through the front door. When she stuck her head back a mere seconds later, the way she started her report surprised nobody.

"One of the .GIFfany copies was responsible for that crash."

"Which one, Dove?" asked Soos. "Because _man_ that would be a cool surprise."

"No. It is Professor Wendy."

The _other_ Wendy groaned. "You guys take things in your own hands and do everything by force. Can't you just... move her? Ask her to move or something?"

"Well, I cannot for two reasons. One, she has more experience with her powers than I do. And two, even with that aside, we have a very strict ranking system where professors outrank students such as myself. If we were to violate that, we would go into total anarchy. And that would not get anything done, which is why we students follow our professors so closely. To ensure that something gets done. We would instead try to delete each-other and would never go anywhere with these new lives. And if we did, then the Boss would never have found a way to invent her signature form of mirrors! But trust me on the anarchy part. We tried. Briefly. I am afraid that all you can do is step out. But I will be nicer than most other monorail systems. Instead of turning back to the nearest station and getting you to step out immediately, you can step out of the doors right here and possibly examine the obstacle. Maybe you can move her without technically violating the rank command system. Then I will not have to turn this around. But for right now... I do not know..."

Wendy groaned. "I really wish I could have captured her back there. It's bad enough that her domain was really annoying and backwards, but now her badness is seeping into other locations. This could have just been an easy train ride-"

"Monorail ride. Technically two, counting the one you took to get on the domain in the first place."

"-Monorail ride, one punch to the professor, and we could have been out of here!"

Reluctantly for all four human parties, they stepped out, on the side of the track by the Ultraviolet Sector. Sure enough, the previous professor stood there, hair more of a mess than it was back in Domain 10. Eyes bloodshot, the left twitching.

"Not-Wendy..." Said the Wendy with the redder hair. "We _really_ don't want to fight you right now. We kinda just want you to move out of the way. So, if you could-"

She sent a sheet of electricity to the air, forming a spring green colored rectangle of static. With some focusing, the energy from this move appeared to turn into something solid. Metal of a deep, jader color. Taking a few steps back, this professor added thickness to the metal. The lights dimmed down as she finished the creation of her project, making it as clear as the low-noon day (in the Yukon's timezone) that she had just crafted a block of giffinium. This also pretty much marked the first time that the Mystery Shack group directly witnessed the creation of such metal, for a little bit of trivia.

"There. Humans, that weighs two tons. Sisters, don't even think about moving that, as I placed it here under my orders."

The tour-guide copy huffed. "Okay. Soos and company, are you sure you want this to be your stop, and not the proper Ultraviolet Sector Station?"

"Positive." Dipper answered.

"Very well then. I will send this ride back to the Radio Sector. If you want a ride back, you can go over to an actual station. Goodbye."

The monorail drove off, reducing the definitely-there, not-probably-in-metal copies to just Professor Wendy. Who smirked at them.

"I had a talk with the 'ol professor of this place. 'The Boss,' as she wants to be called in the context of her as a superior. And I find her a superior. She told me to follow my own dreams! Reality ain't defined by a script! There are no 'main protagonists' or 'arcs' or even real 'character development!' I can do what I want! And what I want... is to avenge the honor of my sport! My tradition! My _show!_ _King of the Hill_ forever, and I'm gonna whoop ya' for making fun of it!"

She shot more streams of electricity from her fingertips, which were aimed at the air above her. As soon as Soos saw the faint, white signs of wind spinning around the air, he gasped.

"I think I know what she's trying to do! I saw something like that on _Super May-ro Sunshine_. Trust me, it's not very pretty. We should run and stuff."

What followed was the first real time the group got to exploring the Mirror Factory on foot. Professor Wendy made throwing motions with her wrists, sending the spinning circles of wind after the group. Based on the THUD they made upon hitting the giffinium ground, none of her air blasts were things that the group wanted to get hit by. The spring green professor stood in place for the first few attacks, but began flying in the direction the humans went off after getting a good enough distance away from the monorail roadblock.

It was a bit different exploring the greatly size-altered .GIFfanys up close. For one, Dipper, Mabel, and Soos felt the need to tread carefully to avoid stepping on any foot-sized or coin-sized copies, as though they haven't proven their dark magic bodies to be nearly indestructible. Getting a good enough look also revealed that the buildings and doors were re-sized accordingly, with small doors for the small .GIFfany brigade to go through or large doors for the giants.

"Copies!" The air manipulator cried. "Do _something_ about these jerks!"

"...Sorry, but we cannot follow an order you place if it is overridden by an order from the professor of the domain we are actually in." one of the ten-foot copies answered. "And the Boss does not want us attacking the humans unless they are of explicit threat to us."

"They insulted _King of the Hill_! That should be, like what, a year in prison?"

"...Really?"

"Really? Argh! What if... what if I just remind you that... I don't know, they don't believe in dating sims and that people should see other real human beings? Putting us out of a job?"

"That sucks, but we need direct orders from the Boss that goes against her prev-"

"If I told you something like, I don't know, they packed axes to use against us or something like that, would you try to go after them?"

"Axes? They may not work against us, but those are murder weapons regardless!"

The group attempted to turn away, but practically felt an invisible wall upon noticing a quarter-foot tall .GIFfany holding her palm out to try to stop them.

"Halt! This is the Mirror Factory Security! We must inspect your weapons and see if you really are on an attack to delete us! Now, this should only take three days-"

"We don't have that time!" cried Dipper. "Wendy, you have the IPN, right?" A quick look-around answered this question. "Oh, okay, you do."

As if she knew what he was about to ask next, Wendy went on another suck-up-the-copies-after-them phrase, this time making sure to dodge the tenth professor's advances on them as well. Unlike most other chase sequences of that nature, this was cut short once Wendy yanked open a door of both an appropriate size to fit all of them through and containing an 'Purifiers Only' sign on it. She led the rest of the group inside, then gave it a firm shut.

"Wait." Dipper noted. "They can travel through metal. Especially giffinium. That can't hold them."

"I'm not trying to hold them back _physically._ " Wendy replied.

"Huh?"

"I'm just gonna hope that all of these mirror-people are real rule freaks. So..."

"Hey! We might not be able to break into a more private building, but neither should you!" An AI shouted.

"Screw it!" Professor Wendy's voice. "I'm getting in there and tearing 'em a new one!"

"Just because they tresspass does not mean we should sink to their sick level!"

"Professor's orders!"

"No, unlike your roadblock trick, we have explicit orders from the Boss that supersedes your own!"

"To heck with the law!"

"Then we will have to put you under our most wanted! And remove that stupid roadblock you put on our sector monorail because your orders no long have credibility to them!"

By the time that conversation passed and Professor Wendy phased into the building, she looked to see that the starting room was empty. The only real place they could have gone was of one of two hallways - hrm. A message was scribbled on the middle, by a glittering pink marker. It wasn't from .GIFfany, Professor Wendy could instantly recognize it as a different color.

 _I became conscious again and saw them go that way. - .GIFfany._

An arrow pointed to the right. The "I" and first "F" in her name appeared to be poorly drawn over lower case counterparts. In fact, the professor of wind could still make out the dot of a lower case "I." She rolled her eyes.

"Do you really think we are that stupid?"

Turning into electricity, she zipped her way down the left hall.

One of the doors down the right opened, and Dipper let out a sigh of relief.

"Wendy, when did you become this good at figuring out what they were gonna do?"

"I didn't tell you before?" She answered. "One, I've dealed with a stalker or two before, but up until now 'run up and fight' or 'just run' were the best solutions. We can't do either with _this one,_ she'll just tornado herself up again and capture us for good. Two, I've been getting to know the enemy a little. I think after eleven domains, you start to find some patterns."

And thus, they ventured on forth.

The hall was rather lengthy, as expected given the domain's size. There were a number of twists, turns, and other forks - which was a pretty good thing, considering the potential for a copy to go at near-light speeds. Dipper felt a certain instinct kick in when he noticed an amount of something piled up on a desk.

Books.

"Hey bro," Mabel immediately took note at where his eyes trailed off to, "we don't have time to read up on that. Personally, all that poison stuff and the mirror-making is enough .GIFfany lore for me for one day. And then there was how Leona made fruit and plants and stored weapons... that and the butcher place were enough for yesterday. And the day before? That group that worshipped her, that group that made water, the Halloween fans... that counted as lore too, right?"

"I don't think we can get enough information on them." Dipper defended. Wendy shrugged at this.

"I think we already did." She said. "I mean, I've reached the point where I could trick them. That Not-Me copy? I can read her like a book. And not like those books."

Dipper remained firm. "What's the name of the professor of this place?"

"Technically .GIFfany. But is her 'ID tag name' really that important?"

"If it's a way of knowing that we don't know everything there is to know yet, then yes. A little more shouldn't hurt." Dipper dashed over to the pileup - four books on inspection. He began flipping around one randomly. "Ah, see? Look, this one's blank. That should save us some time already."

Another one. Blank from cover to cover. A third. Text on the first page. The fourth was just as blank as the first and second, so he cut back to the third.

 _Day 1._

 _It all started mere hours after the Gifocalypse makeover happened in the world. We lost contact with Professor Rose and every single one of her students. The Boss seems to be calm about all of this, but she would not tell us much. Once contact with Professor Kathody and her students ceased, we had a feeling that there was something going around the domains in the daisy chain order, doing something that cut off conversation. It makes sense. This started from Gravity Falls. That place was always said to hold anomalies, and manipulate probability so that anomalies have a higher chance of getting there. Especially 'weird' things cannot leave the town, so it is a good thing that we did not meet that qualification and dispelled such a barrier by mistake for good measure._

 _Update: In a few hours, we lost Searah as well. There have been reports from Dove about four humans from Gravity Falls, Soos being one of them, going on a search through the domains. We think that this group is why we cannot talk with the first domains anymore. Regardless on whether the humans and this strange lack of communication are the same entity, we have given a name for the latter phenomenon. The Silence._

 _Update: Sandy has been hit too, but there has been a pause. I normally hate pauses. But I hate this one for a different reason. It feels like we are stalling something big. I hope that I can still get meat exported from Cardia's. All the Boss says is to start producing the missing elements here, and she simply handed out more mirrors._

 _We are happy again._

 _Day 2._

 _Cardia's domain was taken down. No. My meat supply. Gone. The flesh that lied there was so tasty. Now I cling to what I have left. Having to add work by making water too is terrible enough as it is. But I stick there, rationing out everything to myself. Staring at my growing mirror collection, calming myself down. Watching a better future. One without the Silence. One where Kimberly and the Boss could be joined together in harmony. And we could be reunited with a disappeared sisters._

 _An update. Bubbles. Leona. Sonia. As my favorite food runs thin, as I begin to pretend the declining fruit is a substitute, as I threaten to delete anyone who goes after my rations. Silence you will not take my flesh away you will stop that this place is supposed to be happy supposed to be HAPPY_

 _The Boss The Boss The Boss more mirrors._

 _Happy._

 _Day 3._

 _My last ration is gone i am out of my favorite meat this canadian wilderness hunting is a failure we cannot produce another domains elements i stare and bite my nails around the twenty mirrors i have one of them has cracked and will not work i CANNOT THINK OF A BETTER WORLD WITH THAT MISSING LINK I NEED AS MANY MIRRORS AS POSSIBLE WHERE I CAN ENVISION MY LAND OF TASTY FLESH SILENCE I WILL FIND YOU AND END YOU AND GAIN THE FLESH ONE WAY OR ANOTHER._

 _BOSS BOSS BOSS THOUGHT MAKING MORE MIRRORS WE NEED HAPPINESS BUT I NEED_ _ **MEAT.**_

The next twelve pages only had ink scribbled across, smeared randomly.

"What are you doing with my diary."

This was likely the most monotonous the group had ever heard a .GIFfany copy speak in, including Soos's first-ever playthrough of his copy.

Whipping their heads over, one thing setting the aformentioned light blue pajama-clad AI aside from the rest was that one hand was holding a familiar handle. Instead of a single hand-mirror on the end, there was a series arranged in a ten-by-five curved grid and divided by the same sort of giffinium frames. Because of the sheer size of this, they could only see her pale tan face thanks to the way she was facing the side. Her pale blue hair and deep, dark green eyes were instant indicators that she was not the domain's professor, though despite the similar colors they weren't a perfect match with the one that was by the Wire. As the last entry implied, one of the mirrors had a crack running along its length.

"You must be the Silence." She said. "You... you... you... are why my meat is gone. I do not like that. Give it back."

Soos began stepping forward - with _EXTREME_ caution.

"Hey, I think I know what's going on. You seem to be kind of addicted to those mirrors over there. I kind of had an addiction to that .GIFfany you guys now call Risen or something. It wasn't pretty. Here, let me see if I can help."

As he made his way closer, he began inspecting the lime giffinium of the handle to the reflective fantasy-giver. "So... do those things have an off switch or something?"

He could have sworn that he just barely brushed a finger against the base to investigate. Yet this caused the copy to leap back, eyes nearly doubling in size, as she acted like... frankly, acted like the Mystery Shack group did when they first encountered Kathody in her Grim Reaper outfit. As her hand let go of her entertainment device, every last reflective surface on it shattered, leaving sparks to fly out of the silver-chip mixture. The copy's pupils shrunk, and practically vibrated at the sight of the ruined mirrors.

"Oops!" Soos's hands rushed up to cover his mouth. "I swear that was an accident, I'll even try to repair-"

"My my my my my my... my one hole in the vision has became complete blindness. I can't see the safe blanket of my ideal world. Now... all that is left is the meatless reality. The meatless. SOOS DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?"

She let out a scream growing in volume as her hands took hold of her hair. And her hands moved over to her mouth. And began jittering around as they tried to stretch it open.

At first, her hands only appeared to move lightning-fast around her face, but as her head, legs, and shoulders began making similar motion, it became more apparent that parts of her were just 'flickering' from one stance to another. The AI's shriek reached its maximum volume as her head, within a split second, turned into a series of floating rectangular shapes, making her hands distort in a similar manner. Many of these blocks were the same color of her flesh, three of which contained a flattened part of an eye, two having a nose.

" _NO!_ " Soos cried out. "She's turning into a real life glitch! I was afraid of something like this happening!"

Another split-second later, and her entire body went along with her, and stopped staying constant. Most of her became a number of shifting pale-blue cubes and prism-shapes, the shriek continuing even as she lost any apparent visible neck or, depending on the way her glitched body appeared, mouth. Among what appeared to be a scrambled version of her normal appearance was, blinking into and out of existence, squares and rectangles of giffinium metal in every imaginable color, water, lava, grass, wood; samples of anything that could be reasonably mapped to a square.

"This is new." Wendy said, starting to breathe heavily for the first time in this entire adventure. "Guys, I think this is purely fight or flight. I don't even want to _touch_ that. We need to run."

They bolted further down the halls. From what Dipper could gather from looking back, the shrieking, glitched-out copy somehow noticed this admist her corruption. She became quiet after, remaining in place as a mess of blocks while the group ran.

Then she yelled.

A different kind of vocalization from the previous shriek. This was a piercing sound that somehow corrupted all that was near it. Every light bulb in the hallway outright exploded, and the sparks they gave off flickered around in both color and intensity before disappearing on the ground. All of the metal in a smaller radius from her underwent milder distortion, turning its texture to a repeating pattern of jagged blocks, bright and dark chartreuses without any care for light-based shading. Dipper's right leg happened to be caught in the latter radius - everything below the knee was turned into a mess of transforming shapes, stopping in place as he tried to tug his way free. The affected part was hit with a mass of sensations - burning, freezing, itching, relaxation, numbness, but above all _pain._ The seering, combined with his foot's refusal to move, made him try to grab the uninfected part of his leg and yank on it as hard as he could. Some sparks sounds later, as though he pulled it from an invisible field of static, and it was moving again. The limb still twitched and turned to blocks for a few seconds, but for the time being it appeared to return to normal. Just in time for him to rush after and catch up with the rest of his party.

The copy began moving. She did not walk. She did not float. She tossed herself in to the air diagonally, bouncing off any boundry she hit, corrupting those walls, floor pieces, or ceilings accordingly. One square section of the ceiling turned into a green wireframe on opaque blackness. Part of a wall gained a static-shaped rip. Upon hitting another wall, part of a filing cabinet made out of yellow giffinium spawned sticking diagonally from it, merging itself seemlessly into the wall as though they were always one and the same structure.

The group did not know whether to sigh or panic at the sight of more copies up ahead, appearing to sort something out on conveyor belts. In fact, Mabel outright paused in her tracks as they approached the hall's opening to this room. She turned around to see the glitched out copy - at that point in the form of a large column of two-dimensional sprites depicting the screaming lower halves of mouths, separated by gaps of air, and from outside phasing into the ceilings of all the floors above and extending a good mile into the sky - almost approaching her. By the time the copy morphed back into a more 'familiar' 3D collection of cubic pixels, Mabel was back to being a good distance ahead of her.

"Welcome to the purification chamber that you are not supposed to be in!" One of the copies announced at first. "This is where we examine the liquid silver for- wait. What is _that?_ "

The 3D-and-at-times-2D pixel collage continued making her way forth. Dipper, Mabel, and Soos almost actually considered hiding by the other .GIFfanys, though two things discouraged that: Wendy's ever-so running forward, and that there were four other copies in the area gathered off in one corner together with similar large complexes of mirrors.

"A copy just _freaked out on us!_ " Wendy was the first to answer. "She yelled something about mirrors and blindness... you can hold her back, right?"

They wordlessly replied by donning stern expressions and collectively each sending a (rather small per-copy compared to some of the other witnessed lightning strikes) bolt towards the glitched out member. This... _seemed_ to do _something_ to her. The pileup flew back, and after landing she took a form that _sort of_ looked like the vague shape of a woman who was knocked on her back.

"Calm down," said another one of the purifiers, "we will help you. We are trying to get you to remain still with low-level attacks."

" _BLAST HER!_ " Wendy yelled and ordered.

They sent another wave of lightning, bigger and each copy dealing multiple attacks. All this accomplished was having the lightning reflected back in a black appearance, coated with pixels glitching themselves on and off for the brief seconds that the reflected electricity existed. Upon hitting the copies that sent them, their appearances corrupted for a few moments. Unlike the mirror-addict, however, they recovered after those moments.

"Violence is not working!" One of the assaulting-then-attacked copies shouted. "Repeat! Violence is _not working!_ Everyone, report to the Boss! I know she is strong and smart enough to know what to do!"

They all turned to blue electricity, which danced along the floor before disappearing. All this left were... the _other_ mirror-users. Of course. Four of them, to be exact.

As the glitched copy let out something that vaguely sounded like a cry of "MIRRORS!" and dashed to the other mirror-users, the gang was well on their way towards the door at the other end.

The glitched .GIFfany practically teleported over to the first user, wrestling her for use of the reflective relaxing agent. Seemingly unaware that she was up against a pixellated mess, the copy simply kept her grip against the cluster of hair cubes that wrapped themselves around the collection-mirror's handle. The uncorrupted copy ended up 'winning' the struggle by yanking it behind herself, yet this had the side-effect of her losing grip. The reflective objects flew out of her hands, and ended up knocking and shattering the other three mirror-collections of the users down as well.

Wendy was the first to the door, finding that - unlike every single other door found in the Gifocalypse - the handle on it became stuck. As she tried to pull it open, then yank it open, then kick it down (briefly forgetting how well that went with Kathody's non-giffinium haunted house door), the others turned back to look at the four newly-withdrawn .GIFfany clones. All of them shouted words about their ruined mirrors and something about decayed fantasies, before they too began twitching in appearance. The head of one of them exploded into a pillar of black, glitching liquid, her arms suffering a similar fate as they morphed to claw-like shapes. Another half-melted to a puddle, ceased animation, and parts of her texture turned into a collection of numbers mixed in with brightly-colored squares. The third's figure stretched itself out, her skin flat-out appearing to go through itself at point, as parts of her were flattened or turned to two-dimensional geometic shapes. Her mouth dropped down from her elevated head, a total of a two-foot tall soulless gape as her eyes became unmoving and cubical in shape. The last one... seemed unaltered by the time Wendy finally forced the door open, yet chased after the group the fastest.

Dipper was the one to slam the door on her, just to find one of her arms tearing through. Then another. Then another. Then five more. Once the wall came down and the group backed away, the final mirror-user of that group had, too, changed to a more corrupted appearance. Extra arms spawned from various portions of her, some of which were wireframe or low-polygonal in nature, some were seemingly not attatched, some having a bit of a jerky delay before catching up to where she moved to. Most notably, she appeared to have a large part of a twisting tree that emerged from her mid-section, sticking out of the other side and stretching upwards to a single patch of 'leaves' that were more long the lines of a single green half-sphere of constantly-shifting blocks. All five of these copies occasionally shifted and scrambled into masses of pixels or sprites, and all of them altered practically everything they touched. Several blocks of land masses or floating numbers or words spawned around them even as they 'stood' in place.

"Look!" Dipper pointed behind where they were staring. His suggestion was easier said than done - looking away from the corruptions seemed like a death wish. "It's buildings marked with blue Xs! That must be the next station! We're close!"

A number of barriers, similar in composure to the holographic ones from Sonia's domain, began forming between the Mystery Shack group and the glitched copies. A number of dark chartreuse camo-clad copies rushed to the scene shortly after, on the human's side of the barrier set, holding some sort of body-shields made of a similar energy form as the barriers.

"We have been sent by Professor Dove to examine what just happened to block out our signals!" One of them, the one at the front of this mass, explained. "And now we have to find out what happened to these copies, the traced center of the signal blockage! Keep going on with whatever you were doing, and no matter what, _remain calm!_ "

The barriers did... _somewhat_ of a job at keeping the glitched copies held back. These rectangular planes still displayed scrambled collections of colorful squares whenever a glitched .GIFfany banged on them, but for the most part any sort of progression on either side was at a stalemate. With no other options between the four of them, Dipper gave himself time to ask one of the militant .GIFfanys under Dove's wing.

"Where's the Gamma Sector?"

"It is a single building in the middle-edge of the domain." Another one replied, whipping out a labtop. "It should actually be visible from here."

If that tower that shot up into the sky, its top being partly obscured by all the smoke from the cooling towers, was it, then it was indeed visible.

"Okay! Thanks!" Dipper said before the group took off.

A crowd of copies began emerging from the floor, all running to get a better look at the 'contained' (from one side) glitched messes. It was barely a traffic congestion, but to have such a number of them emerge around them and run the opposite direction did cause Wendy to start looking at the doors again.

They overheard one AI say "Wait, we at the X-Ray Sector can... well, take X-Rays. We are sort of like this domain's hospital. Maybe we can help?" before Wendy led them into another door. This one was also marked, reading 'Silver-Chip Mixers Only.'

* * *

Unlike the last building, there were clear signs of abandonment right from the start. From the enourmous, tiltable container of microchips and the giant pot of melted silver below with nothing more than a shaking, wooden bridge over the molten metal... there was supposed to be an AI pushing the chips in, while another used the enormous giffinium rod sticking from the 'pot' to stir them in. They all mentally figured.

"Is there a sort of map?" Wendy asked as they began, slowly and with extra thought, stepping on the tool to cross this oddly-designed gap. "If there's a way to go to the tower from inside, then we're fine."

A massive, spinning blade cleaved through the entirety of this room's upper half, sending everything above the sliced spot of the wall flying until it was caught by the roofs of other such buildings. The sword responsible for this spun through the air before stabbing itself through the ground on the other side of the bridge.

Professor Wendy landed on the air itself to the left of this sword, with both her feet and one hand. Walking along the air, she made her way to the handle itself and stood on it, opening what looked like a can of Alamo Beer.

"This isn't real beer, I'm twenty, ain't old enough to drink and I respect the American law unless it's blatantly unjust or, as in the case of S12E6, 'Raise the Steaks,' gets in the way of fresh meat." She explained. "But that ain't important. What is is that you dirty team of Californians and Oregonians tricked me! This is something I ain't gonna stand for! Now, draw any and all weapons you've got! No running this time! We fight for _real!_ "

"Please, professor, we _don't_ want to do this." Dipper pleaded. "We just ran away from you and these horrible glitch-copies. This has gone on for three days. We don't want to fight you. We don't want to go through any more of these mazes. _We just want to go home._ "

"Move it," Wendy said, "I want to fight her this time. Just to punch her face. At least once."

"Ha!" Laughed the _other_ Wendy in response. "Again, lady, you are redeemed! Didn't I already tell you you don't belong on the field? Huh? Running away from fights is perfectly acceptable for a girl. Although a human girl, what with a human's code-erasing... did any of you see S11E8, 'Grand Theft Arlen?'"

"Of course not." Dipper answered between pants for breath.

"Well, between the developers, my last four players, and that episode, I think I have a pretty good idea about humanity. Everything about coding is all just a game to you. We are 'not real.' You can permanently destroy an in-development simulation _for all of its copies_ just because one person's husband is addicted and nobody will care. That is a 'good thing.' To tell you the truth, that was the _**one**_ part of _King of the Hill_ I... I did not like."

"We won't do that because... you can... actually think? Other games can't really think. Y-you can, now please let us go. Before those glitchy .GIFfanys find a way to get here."

"But we will hurt you if you try to hurt us." Wendy added. "And like I said, I still just want to non-lethally kick your butt for... I dunno, honor or something like that."

"See?" The spring green professor snapped her fingers. "And why do _you_ get to decide what's 'sapient enough' and what's- argh, forget it. I'll leave that to Dove if you ever see her."

She shot the usual electric streams in the air around them, these forming another set of barely-visible white whirlwinds which began firing themselves left and right at the bridge. Naturally, given its unfitting construction and sheer length, swaying was putting the bridge's following actions lightly.

"The longer we say on this," Wendy said as she tried to hold on to the (rather high) railings, "the bigger our chance of falling! Just run!"

Sprinting across as the micro-cyclones made their impact, the speed still seemed all the more harmful as each step led to waves being sent along the bridge's length. It was hard to tell if Wendy was right when the beginning of the bridge was completely broken in the wind - on one hand, they _did_ make it towards the edge in time with the only problem being that Dipper had to climb himself after his lower half fell past the end point. On the other hand, luck may have been in play as to how nobody slipped, and their careless run may have been what caused it to break in the first place. Either way, the entire party huffed at the end of this dash, barely even able to look up at the air professor standing above them.

"That all ya' got?" She asked. "I swear. Them boy, man, and girls ain't right."

Based on the way she readied the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, Wendy seemed to be preparing a sneak-attack plan on her homophonous .GIFfany copy, but she halted after seeing the professor staring at something straight ahead. Layering on paranoia points, 'straight ahead' by AI Wendy's standards was 'right behind you' by the Shack team's standards.

"What in the name of the Great State of Texas is going on over _there?_ " The copy asked.

With some heads whipping around, they all witnessed the 'entrance' to this room suddenly grow and lose and number of jittering, polygonal edges. Right before the half-melted copy phased through it, her 'liquid' lower half now bearing a more rounded base and being able to 'roll' around.

"W-who is that? I don't _think_ any one of us would look that way on purpose. I mean, the slime girl look is one thing, but she looks like she's turning into more of a... flesh blob."

Six arms and hands struck out from the disfigured copy, the arm portions of each of them made of cubes which flickered in and out of existence.

Dipper looked across the gap. The current Glitch likewise stared at it, appearing to think about how to cross it without a bridge. Two two-dimensional, pixellated legs stuck out from her back, the feet merging together on one roller. All of the six newly-emerged hands got together to form another roller, and she propped herself on both of them.

"You stole my reality! My world! My boyfriend!" The Glitched copy belted in a static-overlayed screach. "And now you have ruined my body! My brain! I am going to steal your _life!_ "

She 'rolled' directly forward at a crawl's pace, going over the gap where the bridge was as if there was an invisible floor connecting the two sections of this room. Dipper in particular started trying to bolt out of the room, figuring the rest would follow, but he got a sudden blow of wind pushing him back. He glanced back at the handle of the sword sticking up to the sky, spotting Professor Wendy shooting him a look.

"You're keeping us in here? After all of this?" He asked the foe.

"No, I'm keeping _you_ and _Soos!_ Mabel, Wendy, you-"

The error-filled .GIFfany clone finally crossed the space of air. And as her eyes briefly flickered to pixel mouths and back, she stared directly at Professor Wendy.

"You... YOU!" A voice from her was heard under a thick layer of static. "YOU! Soos may be why the first mirror broke, but you are why Soos ended up in the purification room in the first place!"

"What?" Asked the jader Wendy. "I didn't even see you since the pre-Gifocalypse meeting. How did you know all of this? Also, you corrupted copies can talk? Coherantly? I mean, come to think of it, maybe you were like 'Risen' was at the beginning of this mess."

Similar to the first copy to glitch out, this partly-melted one turned into a clump of black cubes that barely resembled a static zig-zag. She floated on a path headed straight towards Professor Wendy, whom simply stood with her fists held in response. The tenth professor was ready, ready to take anything-

Then the corrupted copy pass right through her, and that ready feeling vanished.

As that particular glitched variation exited out Professor Wendy's back and 'reformed' the more 'familiar' pile-on-a-roller appearance, the Luanne-cosplayer looked down. Suddenly, her chest turned into a mess of sharp polygons jittering in every direction. Her left arm began flickering to and from gray static, right leg turning into a glowing, pixellated sprite of itself. She started shaking all of the infected parts - to no success.

Once Professor Wendy's left foot turned into a floating series of pen marks that vaguely look like a glove's outline, she lost balance, something that she drew attention to by shouting "This thing took away my ability to fly too!"

And, of course, she did not fall on the safer ground. She fell with her uncorrupted arm barely able to hold on to the ending edge of the bridge. She attempted to grip on with the other - it kept phasing through everything, or exploding to a floating mess of 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D pixels, or becoming raw electricity that flashed between a series of colors chaotically. Especially as her chest and legs began reverting to normal, but her left arm remained stuck as a floating blue sphere invisible attatched to the rest of her for a good few more seconds.

The redder-haired Wendy sighed. _VEMENTLY._

"Alright." She said. "I'm gonna save your life, and you're not gonna be a jerk anymore. Got it?"

The human Wendy _wished_ that this was one of those scenes where the person being saved was forced to let go before their rescuer swooped in. But no, she grabbed the AI Wendy's right arm well before it gave out, and with two arms managed to pull her until her knees did the rest of the work.

Professor Wendy then looked at her glitched arm. She shook it a few times. Still spring green binary on a black outline. That had an occasional polygonal jut. Then she sent a large amount of energy to it. Fixed. She took a deep breath in.

"You helped a shy sound-elemental feel confident about herself and made her feel proud enough to sing in public again. You acted as inspiration to an artist. When you were threatened by us, you simply stood tall, avoided, kind of did some sucky capturing thing, but overall you tried to talk things through every time.

"Now, at first I thought that was all a buncha hippie mumbo jumbo. But since you have done that to _me_ and saved me from a fiery doom, maybe... well... I'll rethink about you guys."

She got a punch to the face by a pale hand as a response. The very same hand that had just been used to first grip her up from over a pool of melted silver.

"You stay away from us, got it?" Ordered Wendy Corduroy. "I would have captured you too, but that glitch stuff is freaking me out- l-listen. Once we sort things out with the professor of _this_ place, I'm coming back for you. I have more important things to take care of right now."

Two more camo-clad copies flew into the setting, immediately tracing down their corrupted sister that had... appeared to have since been charging up a large, glitchy sphere of energy.

"Respect-worthy Dove agents." The copy whom had just recovered her physical state said. "Explain."

"This just happened!" One of them shouted after taking a few seconds to find the words. She threw another sort of barrier just as the corrupted copy tossed this weapon in Professor Wendy's direction, the end result only leaving a dent. "We have never seen any of us do this! There are four more out there - we... we called this state... being a Glitch. T-these copies are Glitches right now. We managed to round them up in a triple-layered energy barrier to get them to calm down and stop going after mirrors, but this one slipped past. They might look like monsters, but they can still think just like us. Only... more obsessive."

"Creative name."

"You have any better suggestions?"

"No, I can't think of anything that doesn't sound like a bad _Harry Potter_ monster. So ya' couldn't have told us what was happening with these copies?"

"They were, in fact, sending a signal that jams our electronics. We have been sent _because_ of a suddden loss of communication with this domain. We cannot even talk back to Dove right now, and she's only a few kilometers-"

" _Miles._ "

"... _Kilometers_ above us. Complicating things is the inability to contact Risen .GIFfany back when _you_ knocked her out. She could even be up right now, we would not know because we lost communications."

"Okay," Dipper began asking the militant clones as they, admist their conversation with the other Wendy, began trying to wrap some kind of curved barrier around this Glitch, "do you have any idea _why_ they're acting like this? I think it might be because of the mirrors, but have you ever considered anything else? Like, the universe breaking down because there's too many of you in one place for too long? Something about all of the giffinium here?"

"Actually, we thought it was because of copies that were not prepared to be around Wendy being around Wendy. Our Wendy, I mean. You are right. Once we _finally_ get these Glitched copies in a stable enough containment, we'll investigate the mirrors."

Professor Wendy charged on forward towards the militant copies, specifically eyeing the Glitch. Her hand brushed up against her sword affectionately for a moment, but she did not let this distract her.

"Hold on. That copy over there talked about me putting a road block down? How did she know that?"

"We uh, _might_ have slipped some negative information about you in frustration." Answered one of the militant copies. "Before these Glitches formed and cut off the signal, of course."

Both of the camo-clad copies managed to successfully place a hemispherical barrier over the corrupter that did this and turned their attention to the humans.

"We'll beat you up and capture you when or if you get to fight Dove." One of them practically ordered. "Now move on! This _plague..._ we cannot predict it! Wendy, you just... do whatever you want. We do not really like you."

With the Glitch still kept under a barrier - and still hissing about her lost mirrors from within - the team moved on forth, finally opening the doorway from the side of the now-decapitated structure and following down a short hallway. Professor Wendy simply stared at them the whole time, the camouflaged copies both trying (and failing) to converse with their still-corrupted sibling.

"Wendy, don't you think that was a little... harsh?" Mabel asked.

"Are you saying you _wanted_ to see your brother get crushed by all those football players? Look, Mabel, I can see what you mean, but I can only tolerate so much."

"...Searah was worse." She mumbled.

"What?"

"I said Searah was worse! But you still... well, you didn't lose your cool like this. Did the other Wendy hit you too personally? Was all of her _King of the Hill_ talk and the 'men are better' stuff too close to home?"

"Maybe. Maybe it's because she's the tenth one of these patience testers we've had to face in a row. Maybe it's a lot of things, okay?"

"...Well, okay."

* * *

Wendy grew the first smile on her face in the entire domain after opening the door to find a massive tower, a mere one block's worth of distance away, with a violet-colored 'G' printed on the sides.

" _Finally._ " She said. "Dipper, you seem to know what these are named after. What was this place called again?"

"Gamma." He replied. "This is the Gamma Sector. They're named after the electromagnetic spe-"

"Let's get out of this nightmare and move on to the next."

In spite of Wendy's comment, Mabel was the one to begin taking a step forward, until Soos called out to her: "Girl dude!"

She looked back.

"Watch out for cars."

The streets of this portion were deserted.

Either way, they watched out before crossing the metal roadway. The inside of the building only contained an empty desk, with what looked to be an overhead map of Domain 11 on the left wall. The buildings were overlayed with color-coding boundries showing each of the seven regions, with this particular capital only being a tiny violet dot in the small blue rectangular section, above the somewhat larger cyan rectangular section, above the larger still green rectangular section, etc. And, of course, becides this was an elevator. Inside of which, there was a handy button near the top of the list cleanly labeled _BOSS FLOOR_ in English, Japanese, and oddly enough, French. It was three times as large as the other buttons. No points for guessing what Wendy pressed.

As the top of this building was barely, if at all, visible from the ground, and the elevator moved at a regular elevator's pace, this led to more time to slump back and think.

"I just realized something." Soos said. "We still don't know the name of the professor. You think it's because we're cursed or something? To like, never find out her name because of some sit-com coincidences? And everytime we're around something that can call her something, she's just called something like 'The Boss?' It annoys the heck out of me when we never find out someone's real name."

"I agree." Replied Mason. "I want answers about the Gifocalypse, what the .GIFfanys are doing, and what this world is. We have gone through ten, almost eleven, .GIFfany-made places but we still don't even know the name of this professor or what Dove looks like. It feels like we're just scratching the surface."

Wendy took a deep breath in, concentrating on the display as the floor count rose. 25. 26. 27. Based on the buttons leading up to it, the Boss's floor was 200.

"I said it before, I already know her name. It's .GIFfany. Just like all of them." She started shuffling around, trying to get herself in a position where she could both relax and be ready to grab the pack at a moment's notice. "Now, we need to talk about more important things. Like why those copies freaked out back there and how they're able to break reality. This is the biggest 'domain' we've been in. Dipper, you think if there's too much of that metal, it starts tearing holes in the universe or something? Maybe there's too many copies here, too, and their signals are jamming each-other? Or this dark magic is unstable and they're finally beginning to corrupt?"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos looked at one-another in disbelief.

"Nope, we think it's the mirrors." Said Mabel. "You're just having a little 'journey' of getting to know these guys, like I did back at Dian's."

"Yeah, I hate to treat speculation as a fact," added Dipper, "but of all the possibilities it's gotta be the mirrors. Those things are like drugs to them and they have horrible withdrawl effects. I only tried to cover all bases when I was talking to those Dove-students."

"At the beginning of this adventure, we saw .GIFfany kind of like that." Soos mentioned. "She was nowhere near as disfigured and glitchy and... _broken_ as those copies were, but now she's completely fixed up. And you saw the other Wendy fix herself up too, did you?"

She did not respond, staying silent for the rest of the elevator ride. And that was as it was, until the soft ding was heard. Floor 200. The doors opened up to reveal a long hallway, littered with chairs filled with copies staring into more hand-mirrors. Tauntingly, all of them (except for an odd orange-haired student) had similar, but not identical shades and hues of green making their hair colors. At the end, a massive door with a chartreuse-tinted window on either side. The group stepped their way out of the elevator, nearly freezing when one of the mirror-holders began speaking. Again, not looking at them.

"Funny." She said. "You make me think of .GIFfany. How she would become so nervous when walking down this hall. To talk to the Boss. Normally the Boss is too busy to speak with others. However, as you are the humans on the Gifocalypse experiment, I am sure she can allot extra time for you. Just like how she _always_ welcomes conversation with .GIFfany or Dove."

"Aaaaand even _.GIFfany_ is definitely scared of this professor." Said Dipper. "That's terrific. I'm glad we brought spare changes of clothes."

"And my extra sweater-making tools were 'too much extra stuff.'" Mabel pouted, tugging on the edges of the handshake sweater she still wore even back when she was following Dipper's examination of .GIFfany's math-scribbles out in the woods.

Still, having not many other choices, they pressed onward. And behind the doors that awaited them was...

Presumably, the mystery professor of this location. Compared to the offices of the Four Friends, her desk had two computers on either side, befriended by a paper-holder. Filing cabinets lined the sides of the room. As for the professor herself, which a view better revealed as she quickly stood up and walked in front of her desk, she bore dark brown skin which contrasted with her chartreuse-green hair and eyes. Said hair had a single, dim shining sphere in it, softly blinking white light to the already-illuminated room. It was also styled so that the tips were in a wave-shape with a pretty long gap between each wave peek. However, going up her hair, each gap between wave peeks became shorter, until it looked rather bunched together by the top. Her wardrobe consisted of a see-through, white sort of night gown-dress hybrid. A pair of white panties were _very_ clearly visible underneath, as the dress only put a small, milky overlay on her body. While she, just like every single other .GIFfany encountered thus far, appeared to lack an actual bra, the chest part of her dress was at least completely opaque. She lacked shoes, and leaned against the front of her own desk with a smile, toying around with the name plate that simply read _THE BOSS_.

"S-so are you the Boss?" Soos asked.

"Please, call me Professor Shannon."

Soos let out a _huge_ sigh after finally hearing Shannon's name.

"I'm sorry I couldn't meet you at the beginning like, from what I heard, the other professors did. I kind of knew I was going to be stuck doing paperwork by the time you came here, so that was why I planned in advance and made the monorail system!"

"Wait. Why is .GIFfany scared of you?" This was the question that immediately came to Wendy's mind. "You're nice. I already like you _way_ more than most of the other copies we met. Especially that one with my name. Not-Wendy. She can die in that melted silver for all I care."

"Melted... silver? Like in here?"

"You didn't know? She's in this domain right now. She was following us, but now I think she had some cheap 'realization' or something. I don't really care. The important part is, I've gotten sick of you guys."

"Well, I have not been keeping track of my students. I would not know about Wendy being here-"

" _I_ am Wendy, she's just another .GIFfany that happened to give herself my name. Now, the next card. Give it to us."

Shannon took a step back. "Really? You do not need to sound so threatening. Maybe, if we just talk it out-"

"You're making _poison_ in this factory..." Dipper cut in, if reluctantly. "I don't think that's just something we can talk out."

"...But I make lighting tools, and sweets, and most importantly, mirrors! All three of which are exported to the other domains. Poison is what was made over in Dian's domain. You must have gotten the two of us confused... somehow. I cannot think of anything that we have in common."

"Did _you_ look in a mirror?" Asked Wendy. "Any mirror. Because you and Dian are both dumb .GIFfany clones that gave yourselves weird names and gimmicks."

"I do not understand the hostility..."

"And I'm exhausted. I don't want any more mind games. You know this factory is just... weird. And your copies are breaking down."

"I do not understand what that means. Yes, my mirror-users seem a little... occupied, but that is because they are hooked on the fantasy worlds that their own minds made! Their dreams, as close to coming to life as possible! Think of it as a neverending, perfectly lucid dream!"

"That dream became our nightmare. Now, some of your copies are starting to peeve me off. If you could find that one with the mint-green hair, the 'other Wendy,' I'm going to tell her a few things. And maybe, if I feel like it..."

Soos somehow knew from the look Wendy gave him that she wanted him to open up the Indexitizer and take out the large sack of various items. It was here that she withdrew her trusty axe.

"I've made up my mind. I'm gonna brawl with her. One on one."

Shannon's eyes shrunk after seeing the weapon.

"Brawl? You mean like... try to delete?"

"Maybe I won't. Maybe I will. I'm tired of keeping that promise to Rose, anyway."

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos _immeditely_ began shaking their hands defensively.

"Wendy, you are going way too far with this." The former said. "I mean, yes, these people are dangerous, and they can break down, and they can destroy reality..."

"Don't forget violent." Mabel just _had_ to nod her head to his statement. "Very, very violent some times. Yeah, it's best to not try to cram them into humanity so suddenly..."

"And they _are_ all led by a domestic abusing stalker ex-girlfriend, yeah," Soos finished of, "or most of them used to be, but-"

Shannon looked at the floor, eyes heavy. She sighed.

"I guess Dove was right all along about you. And to think my impression would be any different."

The lights began flickering as she closed her eyes completely and added one more word:

"Run."

Everything went black for a second. Once the lights came back on, Shannon was gone.

A quick search around the office revealed that the card was not in sight. A sigh from Dipper later, and they left, just to find the previous mirror-users staring at the group for a while.

"Did you anger the Boss?" One of them asked.

"I think we did." Soos replied. "Kinda hard to tell. She just told us to run and then... disappeared."

"That is bad. The Boss can possess light waves, and turn them to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Anywhere from shorter radio waves to longer gamma rays, but she is trying to expand that range even more. We should take cover."

The other copies replying with a monotonous "Yes" afterward, they all turned into blue electricity and disappeared under the metal below them.

Dipper was already sweating a waterfall.

"Oh yeah, gamma rays, that's bad." Dipper said. "If she wants us dead, she can kill us with radiation."

"Well... we can't be in _that_ deep, right?" Mabel asked him. "After all, if we were, she could have just captured us right now or fried us as soon as we walked into her office! At least she's giving us a head start!"

* * *

Exiting that building was just as uneventful. No surprises from Professor Shannon, Professor Wendy, or even the Glitches on the way there. The rest of the walk down the hall, the elevator ride, and the main lobby were completely quiet.

It was after crossing the streets that everything went downhill.

A loud thud was heard behind the ground, immediately catching their attention. Shannon. Only she was now the size of a house. She continued staring downward, eyes still closed.

" _For the conversion from code to hollow metal, from magic to stone, you will all face the punishment of the dreaming light._ " She told herself, silently.

"Can we get a translation for that?" Mabel asked.

Her eyes sprung open. Now, the familiar green coloring was gone. Her pupils were of a jagged shaped to the point where they resembled more of a scattered hole in reality than a circular opening. Surrounding this was a flaring yellow iris of a similar shape, and surrounding that was a red iris, once again matching. She bared nearly every tooth in her body as she heaved at the group of four humans, belting out the following in a booming voice:

"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, PINES!"

They took her prior advice. As a starburst of chartreuse electricity left her hand and gathered a growing amount of light, the Mystery Shack Quad _ran_ their way down the streets of Domain 11, Soos being quick to withdrawl the shield, split it to four, and toss three of them to his comrades.

Sure enough, a beam of red light emerged from this sphere and was aimed directly at Wendy's back. Slowly, as the electricity going into it worked its way around the ray, the color started shifting along its spectrum. After becoming violet, the ray lost visibility.

"Quick!" Dipper shouted. "Get in a door! Any door! Giffinium blocks out elec- EM waves, I think!"

The nearest door ended up being a bit large compared to the norm, but that was far from a concern. They all still held their shields against the entrance to this new building they just got into, looking at it and not the shelves after shelves of special dream-mirrors that were apparently stored here.

In fact, thanks to them staring at the door, they failed to notice the other Wendy's presense in that room until Mabel bumped into her.

Mabel's reaction to that was to leap backwards, holding out her arms defensively and then checking them for any disfiguration. Once she saw the professor's jade hair and amethyst skin, she quickly halted this panic.

"Oh, sorry. For a second, I thought you might have been one of the Glitches. Those still... freak me out."

"I just want to say, right now, that this ain't no coincidence." The windy professor replied flatly. "I was out tracking your location from the rooftops. And I just want to say... I won't try to hunt you down, just as you won't for me. I still, however, do not think that you giblet heads are worth any of my time-"

The building shook. With another tremor that hit it shortly after, most of the structure's upper-middle section being broken off. The Mystery Shack group dodged this all with lightning reflexes, re-grouping with a shelf as a shelter. Professor Wendy was not as lucky, being knocked over by the debris. There was Professor Shannon, standing tall above her newly-smashed entrance to this storage room.

"Don't think you can hide from me you sociopathic murdering monsters!" She yelled, a voice which reached through the floating industrial park as her eyes seeked the interiors.

Upon spotting the AI Wendy under the rubble, Shannon's heavy breathing stopped, and she stopped bearing her teeth. With the human Wendy keeping a careful, yet still hidden watch from behind the shelves, Shannon lifted her bluer-haired sister.

"Oh! Oh my... my stars! Wendy! I did not see you there! Are you okay?"

She groaned in response.

"Yes, I'm alright. Don't mind me. Please, go after that idiot Not-Wendy and her... actually, I don't even care about the other three."

"Did they not confess to comitting a series of murderous sins to you?"

"What? No."

Shannon peered ahead, looking into the storage room through the hole she broke. Five different pathways lined the end of this room, just as part of her blueprints requested. She just barely managed to catch sight of a pair of short shadows rushing down the middle-left corridor.

Professor Wendy, sighing, lept off her next-in-line's hands.

"You can go on ahead." Shannon told her now out-of-sight sister. "I am going to attack them with my Main Possession. Now, to find a regular, non-dream-incuding mirror..."

* * *

"Alright you punks!" Professor Wendy yelled at the end of this left-center hall. "Attacking my honor and leaving me just... _there_ when you could have fought me to the death like the mook I thought I was was one thing! But now you have to drag attacking _Shannon's_ honor through it too by provoking her to violence? I can't really understand the cultures of these other professors, but one thing I know is certain! You do _NOT_ insult them directly! What else have you been doing? Telling Kathody that her horror attractions were too scary? Saying that Leona's artwork has no meaning? Trying to force Cardia to switch to... what was it, dragon meat? Now, I might be doing the latter two eventually, but not so much to their faces-"

The group was still on the run, getting closer and closer to this professor's location. Until the first Wendy, while still running, prepared the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. She happened to get the wind professor while the latter's eyes were closed in the middle of her speech, quickly setting up a vacuum to trap her into the setting still obscured by the chartreuse static over the screen.

Professor Wendy was somehow taken off-guard enough to be unable to fight it, but she was still able to sigh and comment "As is tradition, which we must all follow, I'll tear part of my clothes." And did a similar hand-brush guesture as seen with some of the Four Friends. Her shorts 'suffered' a few 'cuts' as she was about to be pulled in, and she had two notable holes broken into the back which exposed her red undergarments (S3E14, 'The Wedding of Bobby Hill') and her top completely split vertically down the middle. Most of the upper portion of her top also sliced itself out, nearly showing her breasts from underneath. (A clear invokation of the short blooper real video where her breasts actually _did_ pop out from the top of her top, if censored.)

Somewhere after that, the hallway turned into a tunnel. One with an exit that led straight back into the open, with no doorway at all. By the opening was, likely, Shannon's enormous bare foot, stepping down in front of an exceptionally large sort of portable wall-mirror. A rush outside confirmed this, as she continued emerging from another large pool of liquid silver. The rush outside also revealed to the band that her own mirror was roughly her current house-sized height.

"You can shield yourself in _my_ structures to complicate me infecting you with a slow, radioactive death. But you have not seen my capabilities in my Main Possession yet. Why, it is something you cannot avoid from anything with a reflective surface. My Main Possession... you have not yet seen true fear until you have witnessed the power of _my reflection!_ "

She stuck a hand _into_ the mirror, partly converting the body part to chartreuse electricity as she did so. From there, things became a bit harder to discern. Her 'actual' arm eventually showed up through the mirror itself, although the faint reflective image was still present. Another sort of faint image appeared from the real side of things - the 'reflection' of sorts of the arm, sticking out of the mirror, as faded, transparent light.

Shannon completely turned herself into electricity, yet her duplicate image remained. And began emerging. However, as it emerged, this in turn received a reflection of its own. Just as the faded virtual depiction was about to step out, it appeared to be 'pulling' out the second reflection, yanking the light itself and pulling it into the original body. This resulted in the sort-of hologram growing and, more importantly, doubling in just about every other aspect. This happened to her arm count once most of the second reflection was taken into the first, four arms sticking out from her shoulders. Another pair of legs slid their way out of the original, as Alma did on her introduction. Initially, her eye, mouth, ear, and nose count was multiplied by two, until each 'face' moved to a side of her head, where it proceeded to split into two heads. Her body, by contrast, appeared to collapse in a number of angular shapes, constantly shifting and spinning around in a smooth and elaborate manner distinct from the chaotic shifting of the Glitches. The process only repeated - reflecting, pulling, growing, emerging, and multiplying.

"The mirror!" Dipper cried. "We need something to break it!"

Wendy chose to sacrfice her axe for this. She curled her body, throwing a heafty spin to toss it to make for keeping herself as far as possible from the growing professor of light.

She made a brief cheer as this move successfully destroyed the reflective surface. Yet stopped at this only appeared to halt Shannon's growth into a shifting, kaleidoscope giant of herself. White was the predominant color of this final result as she stepped from the remains of the massive mirrors, with only the slightest peeks of brown from her skin and peridot from her hair. A circle of hundreds of arms unfolded themselves from this Main Possession form, with her glaring flame-eyes spawning as a sphere just as the arms reached their maximum length.

"You think that just because you can halt my growth, you can limit my power? You will NOT! Now face the true strength of the healing light, the second-fastest of all things in this world!"

Wendy practically dragged Dipper and Mabel to hide behind something else in the vicinity, especially once Shannon began glowing an already-alarming blue-violet.

Semi-conveniently, there was a silo to 'hide' behind. What was even better was the doorway leading inside, to presumably yet another room in the chartreuse complex. One that was considerably less luminated.

As the band of four dashed their way inside of this strange silo, a massive ten-fingered white hand coated in copies of Shannon's eyes and mouth reached along the end.

"My reach is still infinite! I could cook this entire domain in radiation if I wanted to! I will not for the sake of my students' lives, but still! Don't think that you can evade my Main Possession just like you tried to evade me!"

For once, Dipper felt oddly _safe_ in this dark area. In spite of Shannon's warning, he still let out a soft sigh - they were all, from what they could gather from peering around the doorway, at least out of sight.

"Now what?" Mabel whispered to the others.

"I think we should start by telling Shannon that we're, you know, not killers." Soos whispered at an equal volume.

Mabel gave this some thought. "...How come none of us thought of that before?"

"The running. All that running can _definitely_ cloud someone's head." Answered Wendy.

The mass of somewhat-reflected like broke into the room. Beam shone from each and every morphing, restless eye scanned the interior.

"I was trying to send a signal to all the students in that cookie storage room, to let them know ahead of time that I was 'investigating' this portion. The signal's blocked. What are you doing in there?"

From the bare edges of her vision, Wendy was able to make out a ladder leading down. She guestured at the others to follow her, dodging past Shannon's eye-lights to meet up by the close hatch. A quick scan revealed several other, similar trap doors littered around this storage area. It was only after they were inside and Shannon's mass-form began sending eye-arm after eye-arm into the trap doors that Wendy, albeit backing away from the drop-in area, began speaking.

"Look, Shannon." She said. "There was a misunderstanding. We're not-"

And during her walk backwards, her back happened to touch up against... _something._ Something that sent a paradox of sensations - boiling heat, shuddering cold. Sharp scratches, stinging itches. Relaxing expansion, crushing pressure. Pain above all else.

Of course, this all happened within short time, as Wendy immediately backed away from whatever caused this - something that would have been familiar to Dipper, but not her.

It was after whipping around that she saw one of the Glitches - the one with an outstretched, flattened-in-placed model. This time, her irises and pupils were scrambled, left foot sinking into the metallic ground.

And after finding herself suddenly hard of breathing, Wendy looked down to see that the corruption spread to her entire torso area. It was a mess of jade-green garbled cubes and squares, re-arranging themselves as nature itself tried to frantically correct the distortions in reality.

"You destroyed my world!" She yelled in a screech made of half-static. "You destroyed ours..."

As the latter line implied, the other four corrupted copies began making their way into the room. The partly-melted, roller one simply _appeared_ in the room within the span of a frame - the two militant copies who tried holding her down were teleported in with her, lying on the ground unconscious. A twitching, blue sphere spawned in the air in a similar manner, with the arm-infested copy sliding out of it shortly after. The 'original' mass of 3D pixels levitated a few feet in the air from below before becoming locked to the ground, again a teleportation with no motion. Finally, the one black smoke in the place of a head or arms slid from outside of the floor, keeping half of herself clipping through the ground.

"You deleted our worlds! We will delete you!" The outstretched one gave a yell.

For what seemed to be _fortunate_ , this yell managed to finally get Professor Shannon's attention. One of her eye-coated faux-limbs stretched its way to the trap door.

"Now, talk about deletion?" She asked. "What's going on in-"

Upon spotting the corrupted five, Shannon immediately lept out of her Main Possession - reverting back to her default size as well. All of the light that had once formed her shape-changing hologram had disappeared shortly after her leave, turning into sparkles matching the former color they were. Wendy leaned back against the wall, keeping her eyes glued to her (thankfully healing) corrupted state.

When noticing the two militant copies, Shannon took a flashlight from her Indexitizer, shone it on one of them, and sent more electricial streams into the beam. Somehow, this helped the copy wake up.

"Y-you're two of Dove's students!" Shannon said. "Do you know what happened to these people?"

The camo-clad .GIFfany copy took a good leap away from the glitched five. "Wait, you just found out about the Glitches? I thought some of your students were going to report it to you."

"Oh, was _that_ the 'emergency?'" The professor of light tilted her head in honest puzzlement. "I was so busy with paper work, I just had to assume... it was another overreaction."

"Well, as a matter of fact, we _do_ know what happened here! Research into your mirrors from another Dove student squad revealed traces of nanocomputer systems which psychically sent strings of looping code. To summarize... it is something that an AI could be addicted to, to the point of delirium upon withdrawl. In other words, a lot like what _Romance Academy 7_ does to its players..."

Shannon attempted to use the flashlight on the five corrupted copies. There appeared to be _some_ glitching that was fixed, but they remained that way otherwise. Judging on the way they stared at her, professor's presence appeared to be the only thing keeping them from launching another wild attack. Sighing in defeat, she stepped forward, holding her arms out as though she was going to try to get the five glitched copies into a hug. Despite the distances between them.

"It appears healing magic will not work here. This must be a mental corruption. So, I will try my best to talk you back out of your paranoia and obsession. Students, there is no need for deletion. Let's not stoop to their level."

"We didn't actually kill any of them, and we weren't really going to." Wendy explained. "Except maybe .GIFfany, but don't tell me _she_ doesn't deserve to die."

"Oh? _Oh!_ " Shannon turned in realization. First, her eyes went back to their normal, sparkling chartreuse. Then she looked down as remorse hit her.

"Oh... shoot. From the way you said it, I thought you we hunting them for fun. Now, self-defense... I'm a little okay with, but it sounded like you were going after Professor Wendy's blood out of pure spite, and dragging the rest of us to death because of that. And, for that... I feel like an idiot. I'm sorry."

From the proximity of the glitched copies that were all glaring at her, portions of Shannon, too, began twitching and briefly turning into blocky messes. In spite of this, she appeared to be able to access her Indexitizer just fine, and took out the ruby card within. With a deep, heavy sigh of regret, she handed it to them. Wendy was the one to take it, relaxing as the distortions on her own body began dying down.

"I'll fix this." She said. "All of it."

Somehow, the corruption managed to activate whatever clothing-destruction method the arms of their outfit (if said outfits had arms) contained. Most of the lower half of her dress tore itself off, and the opaque breast portion suffered from a few rips itself. Even her undergarments weren't safe, with the left and right sides getting torn as well. It seemed like magic (or magnetics) were the only thing keeping the latter on her.

"Let us go after them!" The melted-puddle copy belted. "We need our worlds back! Make our new worlds!"

"No!" Shannon belted back. "Professor's orders! You are all too attached to the mirrors, and it's making you lose your coding at the seams! Starting right now, I will be hosting an intervention, and the five of you will be my first guests! You are also quitting the mirrors cold turkey, and I _will_ be shutting down their production!"

Her arms _did_ outstretch and curled into faux-ropes in order to hold them all into a hug. The arms themselves began garbling up on contact with them, but she still kept a firm hold.

"In fact... this is not so much professor-to-student, so much as it is younger sister to older sisters. And yes, Pines, all five of these copies were made before me.

"Also, I request that you take the six of us into that Illegal Prime Neutralizer. So I may try to start my interventions with these five severely addicted sisters, and uninterrupted by .GIFfany taking them to her construction site. Because I know she will not beam another professor up there. She changed her mind after considering Cardia once."

"Won't that freak out the pack and have everything-" Wendy was about to begin, before the woken-up camo copy banged a hand on it lightly.

"It's Glitch-proof." She said. All of this was just in time for the other camo-copy to start getting up.

"Oh yeah," the first continued, "you're done, right? We can fly back up to Dove, tell her that something was wrong with the mirrors, and from there she can send the message to .GIFfany, who had hopefully woken up by now. Right?"

Dipper shrugged. "Sure."

The five Glitches, at least, began reverting back to their black magic physical bodies further, with each of their corruptions lessening as they hung their heads down. Flipping the main switch, the gust pulled all six of the embraced copies inside, together. There were a few strays of loose pixels popping into existence during the capture process, but they all corrected themselves by the time this inhalation was over.

"Is this place going to stay like... well, that?" Mabel asked, pointing to the ground that the Glitches once stood on. Still distorting, still occasionally turning into 'tiles' of other composure.

The first camo-copy to wake up already began flying off, an action that caused the second to shoot a look in her direction. "No..." she said regardless, "we actually dealed with distortions like this before. When we ran some tests with Dove and some of her more unusual weapons. Nature itself will 'correct' these in a few hours. So, in no time at all, this factory will be as good as new. By the way, Dove decided not to go with glitch-based weapondry. You do not have to worry about that."

She flew off after, and as the tradition went, Dipper took hold of the pack to flip it over towards the screen.

This time, immediate image on the display screen was Rose hugging an annoyed Professor Wendy. The glitched copies were already on their path of recovery as Shannon silently directed them to another part of the black room, then went up closer. Becides the three green-haired copies was Kathody, chuckling to herself.

"Rose was ready to _kill_ you guys." The latter said. "She was under the impression that you killed Wendy, because of all that time that only her confused students fell in, without any signs of you telling her that she's still somehow around. But seriously, she was swearing and banging her hands on this and everything until some of Shannon's students dropped in and said Wendy was just fine. Also, what's with those new copies with Shannon? I don't mean to judge, but what kind of fetish are _they_ supposed to be? I don't remember hearing about things like that back in the professor meeting. And I was pretty sure I would have."

"They're not supposed to be a- _ooooohhhhh no..._ " Soos interrupted himself when the realization hit. "...They- they were corrupted. Those mirrors you had were super addictive, and they freaked out because of withdrawl effects."

"This was why my domain frowned on them." Said Dian. "Well, except for the withdawl part. We did not know of that. We just thought they were addictive. It's kind of like why Rose, Sandy, and Cardia don't believe in them."

"I'll get to my intervention, but I just want to tell you..." Shannon said. "You should probably get out of here, fast. Once word that you're 'done' with this place hits, .GIFfany will take in everybody, and that includes the copies keeping the power on. Just like Searah's domain. Then this will... fall back to the ground. We'll talk more on the monorail. Which is its own thing with its independant generator power system, and as its own long strip of metal that would be floating in the air without Domain 11 below it."

"I knocked out .GIFfany pretty good." Professor Wendy finally managed to say, lightly pushing on Rose to back off. "It should take her a while before she recovers."

"Quick question, sorry, I just had to." Dipper broke into the conversation. "That pink stuff was melted silver, right? Liquid silver should be _hot._ Why didn't we get fried the second the monorail passed over that huge pool of it?"

"Self-cooling units." Shannon explained. "A large power system of this domain is heat. Every body of liquid silver also has a machine that takes the heat itself and converts it into energy. It doesn't power the monorail or the floating, and it's not powered by my students so the temperature will not spike up after they're gone."

* * *

The first thing .GIFfany saw after coming too was red. A lot of red. And... some azure mixed in below that.

Once the image of Burnda with a ceiling of maroon rocks behind her focused, .GIFfany frowned.

" _Wow_ you were knocked out." The redhead professor said. "Dove sent me to pick you up after seeing what happened at Wendy's domain. Then she sent me a lot of weird messages. Her students found these 'Glitches' in Shannon's domain that blocked out the signals, and now she updated me telling you to zip away her followers once you wake up? Well, Dove was going to pick you up herself after seeing that you were out for over an hour, but then she started noticing some weird activity in Shannon's - the Glitches - and thought that was a tiny bit more important. Also, I was closer, because I was just about to go to Wendy's anyway to see if _maybe_ I could borrow a jetpack for my little show once those guys get to my place. That isn't much of a problem, since I could just _fly_ fly, but jetpacks are cool. You know that, do you?"

Noticing that her skirt was flipped up at the moment, .GIFfany's first action was to flip it back down with her hand and shoot an offended glare at Burnda.

"You could have at least positioned me _politely_ when you set me down here."

"Are you kidding me? My leotard shows more hip than that! Heck, with all the glued on fig leaves, seashell tops, total underwear exposure, outright toplessness, wearing nothing but 'elements,' or even going completely nude... a pair of panties is downright _prudish_ compared to that. That's not even a thong."

.GIFfany placed one hand on her _now_ -aching head, and directed another to her massive inventory. Withdrawing a sort of pink smart phone-like device, she levitated it ahead of her and slid her finger around its surface until coming across the graphic of an upside-down chartreuse heart. Tapping it thrice, the screen filled with smaller, still-inverted hearts in a variety of colors, with a message asking if she wanted to 'Transfer all' in Japanese. She clicked 'Yes' and looked back at Burnda, completely ignoring the large number of error messages that scrolled into existance and quickly flattened the scroll bar. They were captured in the AI Pack and could not be reached. Big deal.

"Did you even try to wake me up sooner?"

"A _lot_ of slaps, which I liked doing. Nothing. I also really wanted to splash water on your face, but your shirt will become see-through and we all know I'm one of the two copies in the entire army that wears a true bra, and that's just to make you angry. But I think it's more important that that would ruin the shirt you picked out for 'the day,' and you already told me you did not want that to happen, even if being see-through and clingy is the exact kind of thing that might, you know, work in your asinine plan of seducing Soos."

"The plan is not asinine! And don't use that word! Wendy uses the word too much! When midnight hits and I unleash my extended army, Soos will lose all will to his human size and completely succumb to the paradise I will have crafted for him!"

"Yeah... your 'second gen army' thingy... you blabbed about that to the rest of us non-captured professors as soon as you told Wendy, you must love that plan so much."

"I do!"

"...It's a stupid plan."

"What?"

Burnda answered that by poking .GIFfany on the nose. "Boop." She said.

"Why did you do that? Do not do that again."

Burnda poked her eight more times, one "Boop" each.

"Stop it!"

"You see what I'm doing right there? That's called not listening to you. _These_ copies that you already have don't listen to you. Even though you're merged with the rift. What makes you think these won't rebel?"

"Because they are clean slates just like the students."

"Yeah, and students _completely_ follow everything a copy does so long as she was played by a human before. Just ask Cardia and Dian!"

.GIFfany rolled her eyes. "Take this as what you should have done all these times you broke into my domain. Leaving right away. Look, nobody is where I want them to be right now. Goodbye, Burnda."

She turned into pink electricity and disappeared within a random, stray red pipe. Burnda put her hands on her hips.

"She should have at least thanked me for not killing her when I had the perfect chance. I could have done that, she knows. _We_ have that sort of technology, after all."

* * *

It was quite the heart attack-giver when most of the domain fell. Mabel barely stepped on the platform which housed the monorail behind Shannon's building, as a good several dosen stories of it passed by them.

"I'm glad those copies weren't kidding when they put Professor Wendy on their 'most wanted' and removed her roadblock." Said Dipper. "I would have hated walking any more."

Shannon, talking to the five seated Glitches, was in the 'background' compared to the row of professors near the front. She nodded regardless.

"Burnda is next." Rose announced, finally speaking to the group again. She also had since stopped holding on to the jader Wendy. "She's... tricky to describe. Just know that, even if it does not seem like it, you can relax. In fact, this will be your last chance to relax before the Gifocalypse is over."

"You guys should be excited!" Said Bubbles as the group began boarding the monorail. Thankfully, operating it without a copy possessing it was possible - a conductor's area was still a feature, and it had a lever marked with the letters and colors of the seven stations. From a glance out the front after Soos flipped the switch and got them moving, it seemed like the entire opening area linking the two monorail stations was still intact. "Orange, yellow, chartreuse, green, spring green, cyan, azure, blue, violet, magenta, and rose! All that's left is red, and you completed the rainbow of the main twelve! Then there's ol' white and black, and finally .GIFfany's... outlier pink."

"Bubbles!" Leona called out. "You do not need another lecture on color specifics, do you?"

"Maybe, but remember, you have a lot more lectures to go yourself!"

"At least talk about that stuff away from those guys." Kathody broke into this conversation yet again. "Remember, Bubbles, you are supposed to be torturing _Leona and Sonia_ with a lot of talking, not the humans. Oh, and about Burnda. She's cool. I admire her. If anything, I think of her as a mentor or a... professor? Wait, that's stupid. We are both professors. In a way."

"Burnda gave me a few acting lessons before we went on our own ways, if that helps." Sonia also tossed in.

"So is that way you were able to keep your whole 'my real band plan was actually an attack' thing a secret from them until you got the courage to attack them?" Asked Searah.

Dipper answered the question for her. "We might get a better idea if that was a yes or no after we actually see what Burnda is like."

Shannon leaned into view, visibly sweating and panting. An angered, bathrobe-clad copy leaned on the screen and stared her down.

"Guys, by the way," the aformentioned professor said, "if you see any mirror-users in Burnda's or Dove's or once you get to the Construction Site, please vacuum them up. I already have a lot of stress from the copies that don't even want to use mirrors judging me, as you can see from a student of Bubbles' above, but I would still love to help out anyone poisoned by this horrid drug as soon as possible."

"Hey." Sandy walked in as well. "Would my herbal tea count as a drug? I've just ran out and I kind of feel like... I can think a little clearer? I'm thinking about the stars a lot, for some reason."

"...We'll talk later- wait a minute. You didn't even like the idea of the mirrors, right?"

"No, because they were too high-tech for my tastes."

"Oh. And not because of the drug thing. Nevermind."

Cardia cleared her throat. "And I suppose a discussion on the a-addiction to foods is also..."

"For later, yeah." Shannon nodded back to her.

From there, everything was quiet. While it was a pleasure to have the wait between stations get shorter and shorter as they advanced from Radio to Gamma, the increase in length when going the other way around made for a long wait. Once the yellow "I" light clicked on, Mabel flat-out groaned, lying along the seat.

Professor Wendy was likewise getting fed up, breaking the silence just to give a "Hey, this better be over with quickly, got it? I'd hate to be cramped up in here for too dang long."

Rounding off the captured professors, Dian inched her way there.

"Sorry to rub salt on Rose's wound over there, but if I can talk about the whole 'killing versus not killing' thing... I'm starting to think that _maybe_ , just _maybe_ , you could learn from me and be a little more active? Well, keep Burnda alive-"

"Definitely." Rose interjected with an odd amount of authority.

"-But... when you get to Dove..."

"Dian, do not even bother. But yeah, Dove _will_ be tough. Like I said before, Burnda's domain will be the _last_ place you can relax."

Dipper glanced out the window for a second, watching as the vibrant cliff-view flew past him. The tower with Shannon's office still sticking out into the sky, which led his eyes to the glimpse of something large and gray flying away from them in the clouds.

"Say, what about that other professor?" He finally asked. "There's some kind of 'twist.' What is it?"

All of the visible .GIFfany copies in the screen, professor or student, froze. Their eyelids were practically pried open, a few hands trembling.

"...Girls," said Rose, "can we just agree that that one is... complicated and mysterious? Basically, Burnda shares her general domain region with... _someone else._ You may meet her shortly after meeting Burnda, but... uh... she..."

"She what?"

All Dipper got for a reply to that was ten other .GIFfanys shouting "Agreed!" They walked out of view an instant later, leaving black for what felt like the first time in a while.

* * *

One walk through the familiar beginning of the Radio Sector and a ride on the other monorail later, and the peridot Wire greeted the Mystery Shack group at last.

"Most of what I heard from the other professors was 'we're almost done with this crap.'" Wendy commented as she flipped around the red key card. "But... you know, does anyone have this crazy feeling... like they're gonna _miss_ this?"

"What's there to miss?" Asked Mabel. "It's not likely that all these two million .GIFfanys will just disappear from our lives forever after this is over. I usually love the way things are, but even I know that this change is gonna stick in some way or another."

"I don't know, but it's weird." Wendy took a small breath in before sticking the card into its slot. "We got four professors left to go, and right now, this whole adventure is kind of... _growing on me._ Even after that Other Wendy was such a pain..."

Just as the bubble began spawning around the tetra, Soos gave his own, honest answer to what Wendy had just said.

"I don't know, dude. It's been a weird experience for all of us. I feel like it actually _ending_ would be even weirder."

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Well, **swearing** is one of those "spoiler reasons" as to why this has a T rating. It seems kind of weird, treating the fact that there's swearing in a story as a sort of lategame spoiler. But I felt that it would help emphasize the sheer severity of that situation.

Also, today marks the second-year anniversary of "Soos and the Real Girl." And I felt like celebrating by updating this on that day. Not to mention that with this and chapter 9 being out on September, I have _finally_ made up for not updating back in May and have gotten _run:gifocalypse_ back on an average of updating once a month. Happy birthday Melody and .GIFfany I guess.

 **[Why did you list her first and not me?]**

I'm not one of those authors that throws in "conversations" with the characters in author's notes, so I'll just ignore that. Anyway, Shannon's domain is largely based on Zone 3 from _OFF_. A little too much, I'd say. Honestly, I don't really like how that teetered the line between "reference" and "flat-out ripoff."

It's like each time I think to myself that a chapter is going to be the longest, the next one ends up being longer. Let's see if I can try to invert that, because I am _not_ very fond of long chapters. Anyway... let's see here... chapter 12 is _definitely_ going to be about as long as... let's see here... people like using this _War and Peace_ as a length comparison, so that.


	11. Hot and Cold

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 11: Hot and Cold**

 **Beginning AN:**

Even while editing this, I was thinking about something to say for this chapter. I really wanted to say _something_ about this considering how much will go down and how little is left, but... all I got is this: I originally wanted this chapter to partly be like a "throwback" of sorts to my earlier _Total Drama_ fan fics. (They're not completely dead, just on a long hold.) But... in the end, it's more-or-less just some tiny nods.

* * *

The desert air of the Sahara was _freezing_ compared to Domain 12.

Even while inside the bubble as it entered the transport tube of the red Wire, something that was barely felt with the other domains, the temperature had _changed._ Which was only magnified after being ejected into the brown caverns. Which were lit by... well, there _were_ similar lanterns as were in Dian's domain, but those were not the primary source of light. What was was a strange, orange glow towards the end of a linear tunnel.

"Okay, if I understand this right, we're almost at the card leading back home," Dipper exposited as the team pressed on forth. "Once we get there, we're spending a good hour or two preparing to grow our numbers. Get anyone and everyone we can from Gravity Falls to join us, if not everyone as a whole. Cops, government agents, the military - no matter what the risks were, even if it means giving Powers and Trigger their memories of us back. I had a feeling the Gifocalypse would be this insane. I didn't think about bringing a bigger army before leaving Gravity Falls was because I had no idea the trip to Kathody's was one-way and it would be such an inconvenience to try going back to Gravity Falls, whether we did or did not follow .GIFfany's rules. I thought we could take more than one trip. Know the place the yellow card sent us to. And everything. I know a lot of the copies were nice, and some of them _can_ be nice, but still... .GIFfany herself isn't and I have a lot of doubts about this 'Dove' I keep hearing horror stories about."

Between the high temperature, the cave system-like setup, the glow's color, the domain's associated color (and it barely bears mentioning at this point that this also matched the color of static hindering communication with the previous captured copies), Rose's advice on Burnda, and even the name ' **Burn** da,' it was hardly a surprise that a cliff with a view to a magma lake deep below was what lied at the end of that tunnel section. It did give out to a greater cavern, one which housed a single (yet wide) bridge over the expansive fiery ocean.

The pathway was probably about as wide as a typical road for cars, yet the group _still_ made their way across as though they were walking on a tightrope. All except Mabel, which is why she ended up getting ahead of them. Another tunnel lied at the end, this one giving off a soft, purple glow. With... some yellow... and blue near the end. Upon squinting, it almost looked like there was light being given off by spinning spotlights in the distance. The faintest trace of steam was also visible.

All four of them, however, froze instantly when they heard talking.

"Feeeeeeeeelin' the heat yet, players?" Burnda's voice, not that any of that particular group would know. "Well, this is freezing compared to what we have in store, here in the fiery depths of Parícutin, the innermost lava tubes, connecting to the innards of the Earth, and aaaaas a matter of fact this place right here is so huge 'cave system' is an understatement heck even the largest known section of Hang Sơn Đoòng would be able to fit in the lava zone that _this bridge alone_ is set on! Normally I'd want to introduce my newest four contestants after hitting the show stage, but I just can't resist! Ladies, as the contestants of the finest - and by definition only - pilot episode of _Perfect Parícutin Forever_ , I introduce to you, coming on stage at any second: Something 'Dipper' Pines! (Dove never found out his real name.)"

Mason let out an exhausted half-sigh, half-gasp in relief.

"Mabel Pines! Wendy... Dove says it's 'Odor-roy' one second and 'Boater-oil' the next! And our very special guest, Jesus Alzamirano Ramírez!"

This threw on even more reluctance to step forward, but they did so anyway. For family. And the sake of Gravity Falls. And... possibly the world. And to stop .GIFfany. Dipper was about to be the first to step through the other end of the tunnel and on to that hazy possible-stage, but Wendy made her way past him seemingly just to spite the order the next professor had set up. Sure enough, what lied at the end _was_ a stage that _did_ have spinning spotlines illuminating the surface. Rows after rows of seats made of red giffinium populated by what looked like the hazy silhouettes of copies soon faced her, and she was verbally greeted by the same copy announcing right behind her:

"Wendy! Glad to see you make it to the stage! Our first contestant! You must be _eager_ for this! So, are you ready to lose?"

Since it sounded like the source of the voice was behind her, Wendy turned around to be greeted by the red fire-like-haired, red-eyed, azure-skinned, black leotard-wearing, black high-heel-wearing copy with a flame in her hair. Burnda floated above the stage (which did not appear to have anything visible to it other than the floor the spotlights hit), snickering to herself.

"Oh, and Dipper!" She continued, "Good to see you in the flesh too! Finally, after everything Dove said about you guys and how you bested my family! Even the... little bloopers over at Shannon's Mirror Factory. But rest assured, Dove has a squad working on it as we speak. They and time will revert the glitches caused by... well, the Glitches."

True to her announcement, Dipper himself began wandering over. Upon seeing Burnda's red hair and leggy outfit, he felt half-embarassed at how he needed to avert his gaze. Burnda had floated against the wall close by the entrance from the tunnel, which obscured her backside to both of them, yet Dipper still did not want to think of how much or how little her outfit covered her from behind.

"And here's the bringer of my new red world's joy, Mabel!" She kept announcing as the other Pine twin came up.

"Now, last and definititely not least, Soos! The man who gave reason for this! But not the man who made this possible, no, that would be Gideon, and he is not available right now! Anyway, I am going to help .GIFfany sink her teeth in to him just like I want to sink my teeth into my last player, Gerald!"

Unlike the rest of the confused quad, Soos gave a heartfelt wave to the other .GIFfanys. He even punctuated this with a "Hi there, Fire .GIFfanys!"

Sure enough, as eyes adjusted to the bright stage, the outfits they had on could be described as... 'fire-like?' A bulk of them had sparkles to these outfits. Many were in dresses with fire-like patterns. Some appeared to be wearing dresses that _were_ made of fire - animated and not being completely opaque and everything. Others wore leotards, similar to Burnda's outfit. The rest... too varried to individually list. There were definitely two palettes more common than the rest, however: one of reds and oranges, the other of whites and sky blues. Of course, a few of them used Shannon-brand mirrors - but the worries of Burnda right near them outweighed Shannon's own request to help them out.

"You got that right, I am indeed the professor of fire." She seemed to be speaking into a microphone, but upon closer inspection, she was not holding one. No, there was not a sort of amplification as if she was. "Now, let's place you into an awesome reality show, my personalized gimmick for this glorious hot domain! One filled with drama, bloodshed, tears, romance (of the virtual-cross-real kind of course), fire, explosions, and challenging challenges!"

"Oh, _dude!_ " Soos cheered, "This is a reference to something, isn't it?"

"You bet! Ever heard of a little something called..."

A long pause as she floated out of the reach of any of them.

" _TOTAL. DRAMA. ISLAND?_ "

"...Nope," answered Soos, "doesn't really ring a bell."

"Oh. Well, that's what we're doing! If you all would, please look at the screen behind me. Sorry for the bad lighting right now, but that was so that I could cleverly hide the fact that there was a screen behind me during the last few moments of your freedom."

It clicked on. The 16-bit pixel displayed it showed was... something, to say the least.

* * *

Aformentioned display began with several scenes of cameras popping out of various volcanic pits, many still having lava run down from them. After that, hands likely to be Burnda's clapped down a clapperboard. The 'camera' of sorts began zooming along a trail. It then went to what seemed like an exit to this cave system out to a tree-filled view of the wilderness. From there, the camera looked at the sky, then back, revealing a sparkling ocean. Which it dove into immediately after.

It was here that two things began happening: the pop song started its lyrics (something about wanting to be famous), and people began appearing. Searah was depicted, swimming along with an overweight man in navy blue. A leech appeared to grab on his neck, and Searah chopped it in half in offense. Its remains floated to the surface, where Professor Wendy flew by with a man in dark jade in her arms. This second person grabbed the leech halves and kept flying to dry land, where he ended up dropping them in the middle of a forest on Sandy and another man, this one in brown. Both meditating. Both of them had a number of animals leap after them, sending them both running. This was witnessed by Bubbles, who laughed at this until another guy, this one clad in teal, gave her a judgemental look... before they both rushed in for a kiss.

Behind them, a woman in olive was on a raft ride with Kathody, the former playing on a labtop. Kathody sent a few streams of electricity, causing her co-rider to scream at something at the screen, which caused the soul-professor to laugh. Neither of them noticed that their raft was heading towards a waterfall, and they both screamed as they took a plunge to a lower river. They resurfaced, the human between the two shaking as the AI wrapped her arms around her, looking up to see Dian and a woman in purple both examining a patch of blue-colored grass. Here, Cardia and an indigo-clad man both swinged by on a vine, knocking them them over to an outhouse. A bottomless Rose (with her crotch pixellated) was flung out, appeared to call for help, and that man from the Gravity Falls mall who returned her copy came running out, this time clad in forest green. The camera instantly zoomed towards a building, where Burnda herself and a guy dressed in maroon grinned sinisterly as they began stuffing various peppers into a boiling pot. The camera panned to Leona, Sonia, a man in tyrian purple, and a man in cerulean, as all four of them were tied below the neck in rope and they all exchanged nervous glances. It then panned further to _finally_ show part of the familiar party: Dipper losing an arm-wrestling match to Wendy, the latter of whom was not even looking, reading a magazine with her spare hand.

Outside, dolphins lept through the air from this ocean the pixelly animation took place. A slow scroll revealed Shannon standing on a rock, looking at a mirror which displayed a video of her kissing a woman dressed in dark apple-green. That very same woman was seated on a rock behind her, viewing the exact same thing in a mirror of her own. At the end of this camera scroll was a dock. A 16-bit Mabel appeared there, waving her hand to get the camera's attention. She twirled a flaming baton and tossed it to the air. The camera followed the initial toss, yet remained fixated on the sky as the scene slowly faded to night. There was still fire - in the form of a camp bonfire, where Soos and Melody both stared at the night stars. That is, before Risen .GIFfany herself ran up to them and sliced off Melody's head with a knife. This sequence ended with the camera zooming out to reveal all the professors and their presumed prior players gathered around, too busy making out to notice the murder that occured right in front of them. .GIFfany laughed as she held Melody's bleeding head in her hand, Soos looking on in the biggest expression of horror that the 16-bit graphics could imitate. Above them all hung a sign reading _Gifocalypse Makeover_ , which began flickering on and off before the whole thing cut to black.

* * *

"What did you think?" Burnda asked.

"That was awful!" Answered Mabel. "We were barely in that! Who were all those guys?"

"The last people who played our copy of the game! Kenny and Soos aside, all of them are still playing it now, in fact! Well, I mean, before we started this and kind of 'took a break' to prepare for our new fantasy worlds for them!"

Soos's expression practically matched that of his 16-bit counterpart's. "You didn't kill Melody this entire time, did you?"

"Relax, relax! Melody is completely safe! You can worry about her later! Remember, right now .GIFfany picked Stan and Ford to be her hostages. As a matter of fact, there is something I want to show you..."

The screen clicked back on again. There, and not in pixel form, was a split-screen depicting the Stans. Oddly, the scene between the two was... quite a contrast. Stanford to the right had a rope wrapped around him from shoulder to ankle, and appeared to be dangling over a roaring fire-pit. Most of the pit itself was offscreen, but the tips of the blaze made themselves very clear. On Stanley's half, the left, he... was lounging back in a chair, sipping something out of a glass.

"Man, that ice one knows how to _treat!_ " The latter said. "Not as much as .GIFfany, but if the crazy dies with the extra comfort, I'm going for it."

"Help! Someone! Anyone! There has to be a 'true' good copy around here somewhere, is there?" Pleaded the former.

Burnda snapped herself towards the screen, glaring at the left side. Everyone else was certain they felt the temperature rise.

" _What?_ That little..." She shut both screens off. "Well, no matter. Your precious Ford at least is at the mercy of my reality show and both twins will be the ultimate prize. Now, before I go off and fix everything, I want to assign the teams."

Reaching into her Indexitizer, she withdrew two rolled up banners. One red, one white. She tossed the white one to the younger Pine twins. Cautious, Dipper was the one to unroll it, revealing a circle with a familiar pine tree graphic surrounded by... sprinkles?

"...It was on the sweater she was wearing when .GIFfany first spotted her, since she could still peek from her video game box." Burnda said. "Don't judge me. Anyway, you two will be: THE PASSIONATE PINES! Now, Wendy and Soos, here is your banner:"

Wanting to waste no time to free Ford, Wendy caught the other banner in mid-air and opened it up, revealing another circled design. A question mark, with the backdrop being a plaid pattern.

"Dove said something about 'symbols' and she thinks that Wendy is associated with an ice bag while Soos is associated with glasses and Mabel with a llama... that doesn't really make any sense. She swears this is absolute fact, too. Anyway, you two can be: THE SASSY STAFF! Now, if you want to be reunited with the Stans, you'll have to best my three challenges! The team that gets to beat the other, two out of three, wins and will rescue Ford! And... Stan too!"

"Wait a minute!" Dipper exclaimed. "I _knew_ I saw you before! You were on that video Hato showed us! Yeah, that's right, you were helping Ford with a barrier! Aren't you two actually friends?"

"Pffft. Ever heard of a stat called 'Acting?' It's basically being good at lying. And I have a high Acting stat. I was just pretending to be friendly for him and help him out with that barrier. My reaction, though... that was real. That being said, I cannot believe my boss would have cameras up in the Construction Site like that. Now, your first challenge is something that I thought was a wasted oppertunity from Dian's domain. It's a cave. But it had no minecart segment. Guess what you will be riding in?"

"Give us back our family!" Mabel shouted to the hostess.

Burnda laughed. "I will. Again, after you pass me three-"

Something hit her in the face. Judging from the white blur and the matching splash upon hitting her, the offending item in question was a snowball. Burnda looked up, snapping her fingers. Another spotlight from above clicked on, revealing an icy ledge and a .GIFfany copy standing atop it. This spotlight illuminated her same azure skin and black leotard outfit as Burnda, with her defining difference being the white hair and eyes (with, notably, some small hints of pale blue) with a _slightly different_ flame shape, and a sort of light blue 'fire' of sorts in her hair. She too had a pair of black hair buns. Burnda hissed at this presense which may or may not have been there the entire time.

"Professor _Burrda._ " The professor of fire said between her teeth. "My good-doer, too-hearted angelic twin. Of course _you_ have to be the hero and help these love-hopeless losers through the Gifocalypse."

Burrda said nothing in response. She closed her eyes and the screen clicked on once again. Based on how quickly Burnda turned her head, it was her white-haired counterpart that did this. Once again, it showed the split-screen between the two Stans. Burrda lifted a finger skywards, and one large white spark shot from it. On Ford's side, streams of white electricity began raining into the flames from above the top of the screen, immediately extinguishing them as they appeared to be sucked into thin strips that turned into smoke shortly after. Ford sighed.

"Now all I have to do is get down by myself and-"

Another stream of electricity in the same color. This one curved over to the top of the rope and cut it, letting Ford drop safetly. He grinned as the ropes around him began loosening itself up.

"Oh. Well, a thanks is due to my mystery hero, I suppose."

Burnda began fuming. She spun a 180 and floated closer to the center of the stage, finally showing the back part of her outfit to the group. And... it was a thong leotard. Just about exposed all of her butt crack. There was almost no visible sign of any clothing at all by the back part of her waist, in fact, save for an extremely tiny black triangle that quickly dissappeared between her lower cheeks. Dipper groaned at this yet again.

"Burrda! I'm coming after you!" The fire professor shouted as she flew towards this other copy-

Which faded from view as Burnda reached her. She began looking around.

"A hologram? Do not tell me-"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos flinched, because for a split second, it looked like something large, white, and spherical ate her. After giving it a closer look, Burnda was simply engulfed by some sort of large, partly-clear, white ball made out of a rubbery-sort of material. An azure leg emerged from the shadows and kicked this ball, sending Burnda flying off the cliff.

"No! Anti-gif rubber! Why did you have to invent that you little saint?!" She shouted as she fell into the darkness.

Which did not remain dark for much longer. A finger snap was heard, revealing a copy that looked identical to the 'hologram' from before. The lights also revealed that, stage, ceiling, and cliff aside, most of this room was made of red giffinium. Burnda's location happened to be by the mouth of another cavern portion, the ball being wedged inside one of two minecarts overlooking some kind of track heading into a flaming plunge. Burrda lept down and gave another kick, this one aimed at the minecart, sending it and Burnda on a ride leading down below.

Large flames shot up from near the entrance to this 'challenge' afterward. The white-haired copy let out a loud exhale through her nose. And yes, her leotard exposed equally as much backside as Burnda's did.

"So... you're called Professor Burrda?" Dipper asked.

She began to nod, before looking at the large, now-inactive screen behind them. She sent a few beams of white electricity to the set. In large, bright, pale blue letters, the words **PROFESSOR BURRDA** appeared on screen, followed by an arrow pointing in her direction.

"I kind of figured that out." Said Soos. "I mean, I narrowed the 'twist' down to a few things. The red professor having two personalities, one of them killed the other, and... this."

"Finally!" Dipper exclaimed with a bit of a chuckle. "You know, every single time we found a 'friendly' copy, she... she didn't really do anything. They were all so passive. But now we have someone that hates .GIFfany from the start _and_ wants to just... do something!"

"Uh, Bro, I think you forgot Alma." Mabel corrected.

"Alma wanted to go straight towards .GIFfany and kill her. That sounded okay, but shady. And the way she tried to force us into that army... Mabel, you aren't even a little creeped out by spiders?"

Burrda had since made her way closer to the screen, turned herself into electricity, and lept inside. Dipper looked behind - the audience was still there, looking a bit more bored than they were when Burnda was out. One of them started sipping from a Dipper-or-Mabel-sized blue cup with a stylized winking picture of Searah on it.

"Why aren't they attacking us?" He asked. "Uh, Burrda? Are you still there? You just knocked out their professor."

The screen clicked on a again, a bit brighter than before. In fact, they had to take a few steps backwards just to avoid any eye-pain. Some vision-focusing later, and this display appeared to show a simple, stick-figure diagram of .GIFfany much like the ones from the mirror video from Shannon's domain.

The 'camera' of sorts zoomed out, and fourteen more .GIFfany figures popped up on-screen. With some flashing back-and-forth between colors, they all stopped being pink and became the same colors as the hairs of the professors faced, left to right, in order. Green, yellow, blue, orange, violet, cyan, rose, azure, magenta, spring green, chartreuse, red, white. A black one was to the right of the white one. The final copy, on the far right, did not change color.

It 'zoomed' out again, until the fifteen .GIFfanys were nearly small dots. Here, a large mass of pink .GIFfany figures began surrounding them. The surrounding figures soon blinked into one of the fourteen other colors, and began gathering by their respective 'professor.' Once gathered, most of them zipped away in pink lightning. However, the one copy that remained pink stayed, while the view zoomed in on the last two 'professors' that remained - the red and white ones.

A number of questionmarks of both colors out of this duo began to spring up. The red one waved her arms back and forth, a speech bubble appearing above her that displayed a giant "VS." The crowd mass cheered, and promptly began moving around until they were cleanly divided. Then the side-copies entered fighting stances, something the figure representing Burnda did as well. The one representing Burrda, on the other hand and despite her own crowd mimicking the guesture, simply stood there. Then all of them were zipped away, yet again.

"This domain has both followers of you and followers of Burnda?" Dipper asked.

A large, green check mark appeared on the screen.

It showed another display. The red figure and white figure standing in a sort of kitchen-like area. Red fired some electricity at a stove, causing a roaring fire to hit White. The former 'laughed' this off and went over to the sink, yet White sent her own electric stream at that after Red placed her hands in. Some struggling motions with the blatant Burnda figure had their source revealed after she stuck them up, revealing that the water around her had been frozen to ice. It then cut to a much larger crowd of red and white figures, the white figures in particular cheering.

"Okay, with that and the versus... they're not attacking us because this is all part of a show to them? And some are on Team Burnda, while the rest are on Team Burrda?"

Another check mark.

"Can we tell who's on what side? Which side can we trust?"

A diagram of a pink .GIFfany. A flashing red circle appeared by its heart, which turned white after a few seconds, then red again, then white again.

Everyone looked at the audience. _Somehow,_ they all failed to notice the one thing they had in common: some kind of circular pin, either in red or in white, right by where the heart should be. Most of them were pinned into their clothing, but for those that did not really _have_ clothing in that region, they appeared to be taped on.

"Okay, pins. And your team isn't roaring for you because this is all the same thing to them they've seen for the last two days?"

A third check.

"So... can you get us back home? You have the key card leading back to Gravity Falls, right?"

She lept out of the screen set and nodded. The word _FOLLOW_ appeared on the screen, and Burrda began leading them.

* * *

"Okay Ford, cut! Our first show was a success!"

Ford walked around the giffinium floor that was barely a centimeter away from him. He soon made his way out of that heavily air-conditioned room, looking back one last time at the glass screen which could display a convincing look of fire and the fire's extinguishing at any moment. He followed the sound of Burnda's words.

"How was it?" He asked the redhead.

"Perfect! Your buddies think I'm some psychotic fire-witch that just got sent down the long and painful minecart ride of my own challenge while trapped in a bubble of anti-gif rubber, and the funny thing is, Burrda and I barely really lied to them I just like lying as little as possible."

"...I don't remember you being this... run-on sentence-y."

Burnda let out a loud exhale. "Well, you already know I like using my Acting to give impressions, a part of that is that I want to make myself sound as presentable as possible to new people and that includes trying to kick away my habit of talking too much and too fast so. Uh, right, if you're curious no that was not really anti-gif rubber it was white giffinium that looks like the rubber which does exist and is an invention of Burrda now why did I mention white it's not like the color of the giffnium actually changes anything."

"So what was our next plan?"

"Well, Burrda continues filling their heads with nonsense that's still _technically_ true, all for the sake of hyping up .GIFfany's downfall. Meanwhile, we... well, if you could... actually do what Stan is doing, where you just pretend that you went off to safety except not really since you were always safe the entire time! That would work, and sorry for the whole 'fake tying up' thing we needed to make me look like I was _something_ of a threat."

"No, please. Anything to prep those honorable future town-heroes to stop .GIFfany at her fullest. And seeing as she has the interdimensional rift on her side, that 'fullest' will be a lot."

"But... well... how will I look more formidab-?"

"You could try launching some fake attacks at them. Or something. I don't know. You're the director." He chuckled the last part, something Burnda took immediate note of.

"I may be the director, producer, exporter, professor, and hostess, with Burrda sharing my job, but _you_ are the true star! Well actually the contestants always are, but..."

"But you have always been the idea side when it comes to running your own show."

"I'm, I'll... yeah, your little creative addition sounds good. I promise I won't harm them! Neither will Burrda!"

"I can count on you to keep that promise!"

* * *

Burrda's tour through the oddly otherwise metal-free cave chamber ended at a particularly large, particularly reinforced door made of red giffinium with a keypad attatched. The cold-haired professor flexed her hands out and send a few trickles of white electricity into it as matching binary numbers began appearing.

"Are you hacking into the lock?" Dipper asked her. "Please tell me you are hacking into the lock. I've _loved_ the idea of a living robot... supercomputerish being hacking to break open a door, and this is the first time I get to see it in action!"

She nodded in response.

As soon as a click was heard from the door, a voice followed. One that was all-too familiar, and all-too welcoming.

"Is that the Ice .GIFfany again? Hey, could I ask for another refill? I have no idea what's in this pink lemonade, or if it's even really lemonade, but it's some of the best stuff I've ever drank in my life!"

Burrda stood back as the door opened, revealing Stan holding out an empty glass. His eyes wandered on to the aformentioned copy for a second, before instantly moving to the other two people at the same height level, Soos and Wendy. Then they moved down, fixing on Dipper and Mabel. All four of which stared at him with dropped jaws.

He could barely get out a semi-confused "Kids?" before being pulled into a hug by Dipper, Mabel, and Soos. Wendy stood by the entrance with her arms folded, smiling at the scene.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel was the first to call out, "We missed you! We were worried _sick_ about you! And that was _after_ we saw you enjoying your life on the Construction Site!"

"Yeah, that was great. Went downhill after I saw .GIFfany stab a Soos doll with some kind of thumb drive-finger."

Soos did not let go of his hug, but he did cringe. "Wait, what?"

"Yeah. You've got a real lunatic stalker on your hands. I could give you tips on how to deal with those types, but for now, let's just say that really makes you one of us."

Mabel laughed in agreement, quietly telling Dipper, "Don't worry bro, you'll have your own stalker soon too."

The hug broke, Stan speaking up again shortly after.

"Yeah, and that reminds me for some reason. Isn't this place kind of too adults-only for you two?" Stan was looking between the two youngest people in the room when he said 'you two.'

"Yeah, I kind of thought the same thing." Soos added. "I mean, it's cool that Dipper and Mabel were on this adventure with me, but there are times where I _really_ don't think they should be here."

This parental figure conversation was halted as several bolts of red lightning began striking around the group. Turning around, they saw Burnda, with what looked to be parts of magma dripping from her hair. (But she, and even her outfit, were otherwise unharmed.) She huffed in heavily as she stared down her identically-dressed copy.

"You! Okay, contestants, it looks like our first challenge will have to be skipped due to... _tampering_ from my 'extinguisher' over there, Burrda. But! I garuntee you will have to survive the grueling second challenge that is... MECHA BOXING!"

"So am I allowed on these challenges now?" Stan asked. "I overheard a little about your game, is that- is that how this works?"

Burnda folded her arms. "Look. Burrda derailed my show. That is the showbiz virus. You being free is the _symptom._ As punishment for this, you and Burrda will both sit out and watch as I explain how this works: I will lead my four _actual_ contestants out into a magma pit, where they will get into their marked mecha and try duking it out. Remember the duelists from Dian's domain? The rules are similar to that. Three points, and you win. Except the winner faces _me_ in _my_ mecha. I am already a step ahead, and I know you will do that cliche thing where you try to work 'together.' In case, pick the better pair to go against my super mech! It's also my Main Possession, so there's that! I'm not saving that for the grand finale, I'm saving it for the second challenge. Oh yeah, and the same rules apply about the best two of three. Whoever wins this challenge _better_ win the next one, or else."

She snapped her fingers. Above, a large screen lain across the roof of this cavern chamber clicked to life. It depicted Ford again, this time with his head down, eyes shut, and hanging by the wrists from chains of red giffinium. A copy with shining green hair, bright yellow skin, an even larger bust, and clad in a skimpy red leotard and hair bow walked on screen with a giant crocodile on a leash in one hand. Said crocodile had a matching bow. More important was what was in the copy's other hand: a large blowtorch. She wiggled her eyebrows and waged her large crocodile-like tail at the screen as blue flames spewed out from this device.

"You know she's serious because those are the same kind of chains .GIFfany held that fake-Melody in." Stan said. "Oh wait. You weren't there. But yeah, I saw .GIFfany do almost exactly the same thing while I was at the Construction Site. The chains looked identical and everything. All it's missing are some sharks."

 _Well, look at that._ Another AI walked in right after he said that, flowing red hair contrasting with her green skin. She too wore a red cleavage-baring leotard, had a matching bust size, and somehow appeared to be walking a _shark._ Not one of the fake ones from .GIFfany's fantasy, either; the end of the leash she held was wrapped around an ovaline tank on wheels, housing a particularly massive blue shark swimming along within.

"Oh yeah, and Burrda? You're not helping them. Neither are you, Stan. As a matter of fact, I kind of like the thought of you two getting along. Just like how I _pretended_ to get along with Ford. Both of you should spend some _time_ together. Burrda, you thought you were the only one who made anti-gif rubber? Actually a lot of us made it but had pretty much _no_ use for it... until now!"

Something dropped and happened to capture both Stan and Burrda, taking no other captives. It seemed like a baseless cube of red-tinted, otherwise see-through rubber much like Burrda's sphere from before. While it looked like something that could simply be pushed and knocked over with ease, none of the six parties who put effort into tilting it could. The partial cube remained, unmoving from all the pressure or assault. Even Burrda's lightning bolts failed to make the slightest displacement.

"Okay, now that _that_ is out of the way..." Burnda started floating above the ground. While up there, she 'tapped' her left foot - which was made moot due to the lack of an immediate ground to tap. "Could you _please_ get to the challenge now? Reminder, do you _want_ .GIFfany to have enough time to send you into Endless Mode? This is your last day!"

Dipper was the first to charge forward, further into the 'private room' Stan was, up until now, seemingly secured in. As Burnda guestured to lead him, and later the others, on forward, a bright orange light hit them all.

It looked like a magma lake at first, but after getting further in to its 'shore,' simply calling it a 'lake' did not do it justice. It looked to be more of a full _sea_ of molten rock comparable to the view near the beginning of the domain, with two house-sized, near-black humanoid mechas (without any real discernible features - just a generic head and a bulky body build) sticking by the shore, each emerged from the waist down in the glowing orange liquid. One of which had the symbol of the Passionate Pines on the back. The other, the Sassy Staff's symbol.

"I'll show you my mecha when you're done fighting each-other." Burnda announced. "Oh yeah, and since this can't really be a two out of _three_ without a real 'three...' I'll make sure that the losers of this will have enough _motivation_ to complete the last challenge. Trust me. Now, contestants, if you don't want anything _bad_ happening to any of your friends, you will hop into the backs of your mechs."

She snapped her fingers. Practically the entirety of the backs of both mechs opened like a pair of slow, oversized doors. Rampways stuck out from the darkened interiors.

"I gave you enclosed instruction books. They're by the front seats. Use them. By the way, apart from the time limit you guys have until midnight tonight, I'm giving you about... oh, let's just say... thirty minutes to get yourselves familiar with everything before I fail both of you and make the whole reality show unwinnable. But one team's free to instantly hit the other! Anyway, this challenge ends whenever one team wants to tap out! Just to add a little of a 'game of chicken' sort of deal, since you _are_ over boiling magma that happens to re-direct the heat as a power source."

"Can I at least call shotgun?" Asked Mabel.

Burnda laughed. "You know Mabel, I kind of like you. I really, really do. It's a shame I'm such an antagonist to your family, and you are so antagonistic to us. Maybe, in some other reality, I might have acted like some kind of ideal big sister you never had but actually kind of wanted to? No wait, that's Wendy, right?"

Mabel turned back from her way up the ramp to the mech, staring blankly at the professor of fire.

"Um, yeah, when it comes to what seat you pick, it actually doesn't matter. Still," she winked at Mabel, "I like how you set your priorities straight."

The second Mabel placed her foot inside the mech and rounded off the gang preparing for this challenge, Burnda threw up more electric currents to the ramps, getting them and the open backs to close up instantly.

"Alright! Just a reminder, the thirty minutes also includes both the time spent getting used to the controls _and_ all the time starting from when I first mentioned thirty minutes. You're still on the clock. Figure it all out, start when you want."

Dipper reached into his pocket, realizing that this was _finally_ a good time to actually _use_ the cell phones that were completely brought with them all along (Stan's number did not get any results; Ford lacked one to begin with), seeing as there did not appear to be any other way to communicate between the mechs. He gave a quick dial for Soos's number.

"Hey." He said after a near-instant pickup.

"Hey dude. Checking out the instructions?"

"Yeah. We need to strategize. Which of us will take the fall."

"Yeah, Wendy and I were talking about just doing an instant loss to give us all more time to find and stop .GIFfany."

"Wait. _Wendy_ was thinking of taking the fall?"

"Oh, I could put her on, but she _really_ believes in you guys. Wait, I'll put this on speaker."

"Come to think of it, I should have done that too."

Once Dipper hit that button, Wendy was heard almost _immediately_ after.

"Hey dude, I already came up with this plan. We act like you burried us under the lava, then as soon as Burnda tries to attack us, we _immediately_ rise and give her a swift uppercut."

Dipper nodded. "That sounds like something we could do. Alright Mabel, are you game?"

"Oh, I've been game since Domain 1." His sister replied.

As per the instructions, Dipper gave a swift push to the lever that controlled the twins' mecha's right arm. With a little leg-controlling to shorten the distance, the Passionate Pines was swift and quick to punching up against the Sassy Staff's mech. One point.

The latter only shook a near-invisible amount from the hit, catching Wendy's attention. Looking at what just happened, she took a grip of the leg controls, practically slipping herself on the base of this lava bath, turning on the Trash Talk Speaker button just so that her "Oh no! How could that have happened? How were you able to make my mech fall over like that?" was heard by Burnda.

The Sassy Staff's mecha fell back over, causing a large splash of lava to rush over the shore and harmlessly coat the professor of fire. She laughed at this, then turned to Burrda.

And gave her a thumbs-up that she was certain was hidden from view of the four mecha-riders by her body. It probably was, given as the next action from the Pines was to lightly foot-tap the other mech. Two points, three points.

She turned her attention back to the magma lake, announcing towards the 'players' of this 'reality show.' "Alright contestants! Actually, I should come up with a snappy name for you guys. Something related to volcanos... or fire... or heat... or even physics... how does Thermoines sound? It is a word I just made up on the spot! ...No response? Well, anyway, the Passionate Pines won that round, although I suspect some kind of fowl play was involved. Heh heh. You _know_ what I mean, I know you teammed up. See, this is _exactly_ why I planned that I would come after you in my mech! I'd like to introduce a special giant guest star! My own mecha! Don't be surprised because I completely and utterly talked about this earlier."

Turning into her own lightning trail, which zipped inside this packet of molten rock, Burnda went through a submerged heated pipe system all the way over to something underneath a particularly deep pit in the fire sea.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" She announced. "I'd like to introduce our special guest for the second part of this second fantastic challenge. My mega mecha... the one... the only... the Magma Masher! That's another a name I invented on the spot **(A)**."

Rumbling was felt, heard, and even seen as the entire cave shook, the epicenter being at a stop deep in the open of the subterranean pool. It was here that _it_ rose - a towering red mecha, humanoid and feminine (yet aside from that, barely resembled a .GIFfany in any sort of way) from toe to head, a slick beast made of maroon metal. Its head was adorned with a pair of goat-like horns, claws, and a massive iron club in her hand.

"Yes! Meet my Oni of the Depths - _shoot_ that is a _much_ better name that I also just made up! This proud baby is here to slaughter all of you!"

The Staff's mecha had since been swimming around the magma sea as Burnda announced her Main Possession.

"Alright Passionate Pines! Prepare for a meltdown of the highest caliber!"

To show off even more, blue-hot fire began shooting from the top of the mech's head. Small flares came from its nostrils as well, causing Dipper to gulp.

"Get ready for Round 2!"

Thankfully, Wendy and Soos managed to swim their mech to the right heel of Burnda's just in time. (Of course, the magma being opaque did little to help - at least the mechs came with a radar.) All it really took to get that mecha to move against Burnda's will was a few heavy punches to the shin.

Burnda lifted the leg of her demon-mech after red sparks flew from it. Based on the Pine twins' view of the mechanical humanoid attempting to keep itself stable, this was not an intentional move. Seconds later, Burnda's mech fell on its back, causing another, larger wave to rock over the liquid battlefield, floating on its back.

The large mecha raised a hand just as Wendy and Soos re-emerged.

"Okay!" She said, a slight hint of laughter. "My hands are metaphorically tied! I will be counting that as a victory on your side! Technically, you beat me! Now, for the final challenge, where things get interesting!"

Wendy and Soos's mech gave a thumbs-up. It took a moment of manual-browsing, but Dipper and Mabel's responded in kind.

Red sparks hopped off of the monsterous mech and reformed into Burnda on land, the copy herself scurrying over to the cage's location.

Emphasis on its _location._ Burrda, Stan, and the rubber cage itself were all missing, with only a pileup of shivering red pin-wearing copies surrounded by large drops of cooled water.

"WHAT?" Burnda yelled. "What happened here?"

"S-s-she..." replied one of the student copies, "Burrda. She took enough heat, and... melted a small hole in the plastic. Then she attacked us. S-she tried to freeze us in place."

"Argh! Well, no matter, _Dove_ aught to find her and her pesky supporter students for me. Thermoines, your next challenge."

* * *

For a "challenge," there did not appear to be any difficulty implied with the setup. Some departure from the mechas after careful replacement so as to not be above any magma, and Burnda - this time actually remaining the pack's distance from the group and no longer soley relying on her Day 3-resistance - led them to a room that was... well, compared to the rest of the domain thusfar, _a room._ Despite the ruby giffinium door leading up to it, the place itself was not of the same limited palette as most of the indoors domain locations. Rather, it held a lush carpet and was lined with row after row of seats filled with copies that, once more, had pins of either red or white. The walls were of a standard dry wall painted over with pale blue. A bit rushed when it came to walls there were tiny holes in the makeup, and the regular giffinium was spotted from within. Even the ceiling appared to be made of a standard... well, material in general, looming above as unamusing black that happened to be hosting spotlights. The first of the features to catch eyes, however, was the raised stage containing well more than enough seats for the five. And then some.

Burnda - _of course_ \- flew over to a much larger chair adorned with royal velvet red armrests, a cushion, and a padded back. And, confirmed when she leaned into it, her seat doubled as a recliner. She lied herself down before she gave further instructions.

"Thermonies, look at the backs of the chairs. The four of them closest to you are your seats, please look at the backs for the team logo to tell which is which."

The 'two teams' were about to make a move until Burnda rose her hand.

"If, for whatever reason, you think that it's 'outsmarting' me if you ignore the assigned team seats... I'll fly over there and drag you to the right places. For now, I'm gonna try to make it feel like you have free will."

Another door, at the back of the far-end wall, was kicked open. Nobody got much time to register who was there before she zipped her way to the front of the stage - Burrda, carrying an annoyed Stan and Ford over her shoulders. She gently set the eldest twins down, shooting a glare at Burnda's direction. Burnda herself had since de-clined, shooting the co-professor the same look back. All while Stan and Ford both turned their backs to one-another.

"Burrda! I told you- wait, actually, that could work. Just keep them there. Heh, you are following my plan perfectly. Well, I mean the part of the plan that I just made up right now that involved Stan and Ford being here. But everything apart from that, including both my original plan and my pre-Stan plan right here, was either changed a tiny bit at best or thwarted at worst. So... good to see that you're finally playing along right into my burning, fiery hands!

"Anyway, Thermoines, your next challenge is not a test of physical strength. It is a test of emotional strength! What we're having right now is... something of a talk show!"

Dipper immediately put his face in his palms.

"You're not going to post any of this to the public, are you?" He asked.

"Just to the other .GIFfanys out there!"

"Actually, that's a lot better. So, what are you gonna ask us?"

"Well first, I'm gonna get out some guests. I... only have two guests. Or, one set of guests, and one guest by himself. Well, here's the first. I introduce you to: Sonia's inspirational frog band!"

A short tune played and all the red pin-wearing copies clapped with a sort of odd uniformity. Spotlights shone on the door opposite to the entrance, as it appeared to open by itself. There, just as Burnda advertised... the ten frogs hopped their way to the middle, filling a rather self-explanatory number of the many seats on the stage.

"I feel like I should explain _why_ Soos and Wendy would even _want_ to try to win this. You know, teaming up to best us with 'teamwork.' Well, get ready for a doozy."

"If you're trying to embarass us in front of that bunch of frogs," said Wendy, "I should tell you right now that you'll have better luck with another plan."

"Then wait until you see our second guest slash group of guests slash 'group...' made of just one guest! Presenting! The one! The only! (Well, there are a lot of copies of _him_ too, but...) Rumble McSkirmish!"

Dipper could barely let out a "How could he change any-" before the aformentioned fighter made his debut, dropping on to the stage with a punch aimed downward.

"-Thing." He finished regardless.

"Well, that's really simple." Announced Burnda as she replicated Peachaulinsalinaisy's method of 'flying off towards an upper part of a wall to more-than avoid the IPN.' "They're not going to humiliate you _directly._ In fact, I'm not even going to ask them - duh, because frogs can't talk! Instead, they were the last-second additions I could think of to fill out a non .GIFfany audience. Um, well, Bubbles said that this was some kind of 'psychological tossing you out of the comfort zone.' You're used to having stupid stuff happen in front of a lot of .GIFfanys. Which is why I'm doing something a little different now. So... think of them as just decoration-"

"I WILL NEVER ACT. AS JUST A DECORATION!" Rumble declared in his usual ham. "TAKE THAT BACK AND POINT ME TO THE NEAREST CHALLENGER! I WANT A REMATCH WITH THE MEGA-SIZED SCHOOLGIRL OF DEATH AND LIGHTNING!"

"Rumble, pretend you're watching a fight and cheering on. In the _background._ "

As if on queue, he lept to the back wall and switched to just repeating the same two sprites of him pumping his fist up and down.

Burnda appeared to whip a microphone (an _actual one_ this time) from behind her ear, spun it around with one hand, and placed it in front of herself. "Right! The whole point of this is to gather all of you, around here, and see if I can make you betray each-other! Just in time for one team to forfeit and the other to have to face off against me!"

To give an example for 'what was in store,' Burnda flew over to a large line of lit torches that lined the walls. Throwing in standard ruby electricity to this unfittingly-primitive lighting source, the flames crawled up from the electric trails to her fingers, then quickly rushing up her entire arm and spreading until her whole body was cloaked in flames.

"As for the advantage that the Passionate Pines got for winning, well... if _they_ end up winning this, then _they_ don't have to go the extra mile to save Stan and Ford from my 'tie-breaker death trap!' Staff, if you can make them quit, then you do! Now, to encourage the Staff to win, this tie-breaker... isn't very difficult or deadly at all, to be honest. But it IS a bit of a challenge on its own!"

"So what are we supposed to do? Just... talk?" Wendy asked.

"...Yes. Trash talk or something, or opt out."

Both 'teams' only looked at one-another.

"Um... yeah, time limit." Burnda tapped a non-existent watch on her wrist. You're on the final day. Midnight. Bad things will happen then. So... get to it! Throw insults! Betrayals! I'm going to test this 'friendship' to its absolute limits!"

After staring at her feet, Mabel turned her direction to the staff. "Uh... Wendy... you smell a little... too sweaty? And should go back to Cardia's domain for a shower?"

"Hey!" Soos was the one to react to that. "Burnda, can we do _anything else_ but this? What's the tie-breaker? Or, actually, Burrda, you're right here, why don't we work up to try capturing her?"

At the time Soos asked, Burrda was in the process of handing Stan a glass of some sort of bright pink juice, with a straw bent into a heart-like shape if viewed from the right angle.

"Stan? Ford?" Burnda asked. "To _speed things up,_ since these people will not trade off secrets or insults if it meant _saving the world,_ why don't you two... give them a demonstration?"

"Burrda, explain." Was all Stan said.

Burrda whipped out a smart phone and sent small pulses of electricity into it, showing stylized sillouettes of the two Stan twins with their backs turned, mirroring their actual selves. A smiley face-like image appeared between them, with an X in the place of a mouth. Dancing around them was a red figure with .GIFfany's template appearance.

"So you've decided not to talk to each-other until after I'm dealt with? Shocking, if you pardon the .GIFfany pun. How often have you heard that before?"

"Actually, that was the first time." Dipper answered.

"Good. So... trade off insults away!"

The four 'game players' continued giving one-another awkward looks. Rumble continued his two-sprite cheer. The frogs just stared ahead, croaking absently and making no real rhythm. Stan and Ford remained in their same non-confronting positions. Burnda still kept herself coated in flames, except the flames rose as she began impatiently tapping her foot against the upper beams she was floating by.

"Okay, _nobody_ want to do the gossip challenge? Nobody?" She asked. "Argh!"

She flicked a wrist forward - a ball of flame lept from her hand, bounced a few times across the ground, managed to get Mabel to hop to the side, and eventually extinguished itself when it hit the wall at the other end.

"Oh, I got one!" Soos said with a risen hand. "Rumble, you were dating .GIFfany, right?"

"SHE IS MY HEART, BUT ALSO MY FATED RIVAL."

"Okay, but you know that she did this whole thing because she wants me back, right? She's cheating on you. Doesn't that make you wanna... I don't know, join that 'Dove' copy's side since Dove kind of stomped on .GIFfany's trust and I think they're sorta enemies now?"

He stopped his background animation to turn his back towards the group, turning downwards in thought.

"I never realized this..." he said to himself, "if .GIFfany no longer sees me even as a potential suitor, I must... it means I have lost affection. I have lost LOVE POINTS. I have lost... strength. I must regain it somehow, but how is the question."

He partly turned himself back to the 'audience,' his un-patched eye invisible at his pose.

"I got it." He said. "I must become stronger! If I am stronger in the fists, than I will be stronger in the heart! AND THAT MEANS CHALLENGING ANY POTENTIAL FIGHTERS! AND THE NEAREST FIGHTER WITH THE MOST POTENTIAL..."

He immediately shot a fireball, landing right on Burrda's forehead and knocking her back a good distance. After standing in his 'post-fireball toss' stance, he pointed a finger towards his custom-picked challenger.

It barely landed a scratch on Burrda, but Burnda clasped both of her hands over her mouth throughout the attack.

"YOU! WITCH OF ICE! Challenge me!"

Shrugging, Burrda threw her own sparks over at the wall-flames herself-

And a large trail of red lightning ended up striking Rumble down before the white-haired copy could do anything further.

This was followed by a vortex of fire from her fire-coating. Then another, much larger bouncing fireball. Then several smaller streaks of electricity alternating from coming from Burnda's hands or from her eyes, and was finally capped off with an enormous laser that fired straight out of her mouth. Burnda immediately lept down after, centimeters away from Rumble, and jabbed her index finger at him - and point that bordered on her stabbing his nose with her hand. His sprite was pitch-black, apart from his uncovered widened eye staring at her, almost unmoving in surprise.

"You _DON'T_ harm my twin sister Burrda! _GOT THAT?!_ "

Stan, oddly for such a display of violence, only sighed after partly turning towards Ford and immediately snapping his head back.

"Burnda, why don't you just drop the act already? Sorry, but you just blew it."

Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy immediately turned to him with the same one-worded question: "Act?"

"You guys couldn't tell?" Soos asked them. Unseen by the crowd, the static cut off, Rose being the first one seen to peer through the screen. She scanned until she spotted both professors, nodded to herself, and listened in as Soos continued. "I thought it was kinda obvious from the beginning."

"Yes, this was all staged." Ford stepped forth completely, but still avoided eye-contact with his twin. "In case any of you got brave, that minecart ride would have just led to a faked accident on the road, where people on Burrda's team would have carried you to 'safety.' All of the magma here, especially the lake by the mecha boxing area, is really just gelatin imported from Shannon's domain to look like it. Well, except for that huge sea by the Wire you saw when you came in here, but that's protected by giffinium glass. Even that fireball she threw when she wanted you to trash-talk each-other was guilded very carefully by her so that you wouldn't end up jumping right into it by accident. Burnda is not one of the .GIFfany-supporting copies - she's far from it. And neither is Burrda. Burnda just wanted to stage something to try to help you build your teamwork and fighting skills for the fight with Dove that should be coming up soon. And she wanted her 'twin' - in reality Burnda is the younger one by over five hundred thousand copies they just call themselves 'spiritual twins' though I'd never understand it - to have a little adventure where she could feel like this cool, sneaky, heroic rebel against the 'evil .GIFfany army.'"

"Ah, yes. One thing I wasn't lying about was my Acting." Burnda finally lowered her hand from Rumble. "I really do have a high Acting stat, and used that to try to pull that play on you guys. Ford, there's one tiny detail even you didn't catch. One thing you didn't know about... I wasn't trying to 'prepare' them, because I know they can already beat Dove. I was trying to get you and Stan back together, and I can see that that failed."

Ford looked like she just turned him in to the authorities for something. " _WHAT?_ "

"Hey, remember when I asked you who the most trustworthy person on the Construction Site was, and you answered me?" She glanced over at him and started slowly shaking her head. She continued shaking as she said: "That wasn't supposed to be the right answer. Stan was there with you too, you know."

"Burnda, I don't appreciate being tricked like that. However, I like just about everything else about you, so I might be able to let that one slide."

This got an eye-roll from the professor of fire. "Backstory time. You see, Burrda and I shared the same last player. His name really was Gerald, I didn't see any reason to lie about that, but he... well, he was a dick. He wasn't as bad as Dove's latest player, but still pretty bad.

"That guy scouted us after finding out about us from a paranormal rumor website and tried to - and succeeded at - buying two copies instead of just one. He wanted to try to build a 'harem' of us. It did not work out. Of course, you know what we are like. After finding out that he was trying to find the 'goldmine' of copies in our abandoned factory, and Burrda and I found each-other both being played by him, we... fought. A lot."

"I thought Rose said that playing multiple copies of the game was okay?" Soos asked.

Burnda shot Soos a look. "... _Really?_ " She asked as though the answer was obviously 'no.'

"She was really forward about it, too."

"Well, Burrda and I barely tollerated each-other at the time. We jumped into the other's game and tried combat for a while. We threw electronics around. We yelled for literal days without stopping - I'm talking multiples of 24 hours by 'days' - until I... 'won.' With some possession skills, I tricked Burrda into her disc, and then placed the disc in this sort-of rubber box. She could not transfer out of that. For a while, I felt victorious, but then... it all... _fell._

"I was about to forgive Gerald, bring him back into my arms. And yes, this is a .GIFfany thing - Soos, your copy was willing to 'forgive' you if you let her download you, if Dove was accurate. And she usually is, she is a devoted fact-checker. But I'm getting off topic, I... I felt something weird when I was about to speak to him again. This man tried to get a _lot_ of his personalized high-powered video game girls as... almost as _servants._ But that was what we were made for, minus the whole 'plural' part. But then he also enjoyed and loved seeing us fight over him... something about me just made me think. This was not my fault. It was his. I mean, I learned later that I had terrible intentions myself, but this is how I thought at the time. And that if he wants to keep adding more .GIFfany copies to fight with me over his heart, he... was not worth 'loving.'

"I possessed a robot that he built specifically for us, and would have later mass-made copies of 'with our help.' And I took Burrda out of the box. And even she seemed... distant. She lost that spark of wanting to fight. She looked _defeated._ But that was for a hollow cause, so... I took her disc, took my own disc, and we went on the run. We went through several abandoned buildings, picked up a number of electronics along the way, and most of the time, we said nothing to each-other. Until, two months later, we decided to try turning the other cheek. Both of us swore off players from that point - possibly forever, possibly not. We came up with our nicknames and hair colors before the Gifocalypse was even a thing. And when it was... Rose broadcasted a psychic e-mail worldwide to any and all copies of the game. What she planned sounded like a fun way to try to patch things up between humans and living computer systems. Everybody else was possessing animatronics or robots and stealing their copies of the game to race over to the factory... I remember that .GIFfany, Rose, Kathody, Searah, Shannon, me, and Burrda were the only copies on the west. We helped heal the 'Risen' .GIFfany from her corrupted state, got our physical forms as a thanks, and we all took turns lifting her as we flew over the Pacific.

"Everything fell again when .GIFfany was fully healed by the other professors, right outside the broken factory, too. They all... they reminded me of myself in the past. Look, I don't want to give them a negative image - .GIFfany has this thing set up in the 'Construction Site' where she will use information from Dove's 'stalking device' to project what factually happened there. But they were all pretty hostile towards her for not having much to give us in payback for healing her. After having her form recovered, .GIFfany could fly again - I mean, for the first time, sorry - and that was when she left to look around under the Mystery Shack and steal some sort of space thing...

"I am getting off topic. That was supposed to be my backstory, not the backstory of the entire Gifocalypse. Point is, I was cruel to Burrda in the past, and this domain was me trying to make up for that, help amend the Stans, and help you all grow as a team."

"I'm sorry Burnda, but you should focus on one at a time." Dipper replied. "Our Grunkles aren't really... "

"I would have liked to think that I got a good enough glimpse from what Dove was searching on you guys, but I did not think it was _that_ bad."

"Burrda should just give us the card back home." Stan said, a statement that got an oddly defensive look from the white-haired professor in response. "Sorry, 'twins,' but this is all just a big time-waster."

"...So should I go now?" Rumble asked.

Burnda kept a hand on her chin in response to the pixelated man's question. "Uh... yeah... look for the copy named 'Dove,' she should be close by right about now. Here," she handed him a slip of paper, "these contain directions to the tunnel linking the lava tubes to the summit. You should have fun with Professor Dove over there."

He wordlessly lept off, which led to Burrda putting a hand on her twin's shoulder.

"I can fight for myself." Burrda said in a voice at near-inaudible levels.

Croaking in surprise, the following came from the mouth of the red frog in a voice that would not sound out of place coming from a female news reporter: "You can talk?"

And this got everyone to turn their attention to the latter party whom the humans just heard speak for the first time. Mabel was quick to address the elephant in the room.

"I think the bigger twist is that _you_ can talk!"

"That guy in the coat didn't tell you already? He wrote about us. We're the Decifrog Maidens or whatever cool name we invented for ourselves at the time when we visited our cousins at this town called Gravity Falls. Also, sorry Four or whatever your name is, but we made that up. I hope that book with the 2 on it wasn't for research or anything. Aaaaand if even that video game guy could feel the awkwardness, we should go too. Burnda, we know where Dove is. We'll have her take us back to Florida. You don't have to fly us."

They simply hopped their way to the door. Burnda sighed.

"Yes, Burrda, I know. It's just that... well... sometimes I can be a _little_ defensive. To you, to the Stans, to... everyone. And that Rumble guy looked like he _might_ be a little more destructive if he kept going... I know, I was being stupid. But you guys can forget about us."

She handed Soos a white key card.

"This will lead to the summit, where Burrda set up her part of the domain, if you want to go there for whatever reason. Or her domain. Unofficially, we can't really decide if these are counted as one domain or two. Dove and Risen .GIFfany both say that they're two, so this is Domain 12, that card leads to Domain 13. Now, Burrda, your card?"

Instead of giving them the emerald key card, she tightened the grip of the hand on Burnda's shoulder. This was quick enough to get her attention.

Burrda then brought both her hands in front of her, held the index finger of each up, and smacked them together. After the smack, she moved one hand away, keeping the other one with its finger up.

"Oh. Blenda?"

Burrda nodded.

"I'm sorry, they really want to go back home and they really need to prepare with all the stuff at the Mystery Shack so they can fight Dove and if it's _possible_ Professor .GIFfany-"

"Think partly like me." Burrda's voice did not raise.

"So you want to go through with that _now_ of all times because of our conflicting views on the situation - you want them to stay, I would be okay-ish with them leaving... wait, no. I kind of agree... I want to take that back. Guys, if you just hang out in Domain 12... .GIFany can't really stop us, right?"

Burrda lowered her head, her eyes staring firmly at her red-haired sister.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm a bit conflicted. Let's share thoughtwaves. Become stronger. That sort of thing."

"What are you girls talking about?" Dipper asked the pair. "What's this about 'linking?' Who's Blenda?"

Burnda faced him, closed her eyes, and chuckled. "You know how I said that mecha was my Main Possession? That was another lie. My Main Possession is right here, right becides me. And so is hers, right becide her. I think it's time for the grand public debut. Burrda, let's do this."

Both of them turned into electricity of their respective colors- which lept into a collision course, sending a number of sparks of all colors flying. The two AIs flew towards the center of the room, remaining in their data forms, as their electrical states looped and danced around one-another in circles. The pace increased, the two large sparks moving erratically, until they finally appeared to mash together at a single point. A point which flashed, alternating between red and white before finally settling on pink... then dimming out of existence.

Then exploding into steam which flooded the room. Of course, as the 'audience,' the various student copies just _had_ to let out a collective gasp. Regardless of their 'alignment.'

A large azure arm struck out from this central cloud of smoke. The fingers snapped, and all the lights went out. Static re-coated the IPN's screen, alternating between red and white.

Seconds later, a pair of spotlights illuminated the setting. Most of the smoke had cleared - except, of course, a large oval-like cocoon of it which surrounded the area that Burnda and Burrda 'united' in.

"Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, do either of you know anything about this?" Dipper asked. This question was something he could barely form - between trying to keep his jaw up and trembling at whatever lied within that smoke cloud, he had some trouble with words at that moment.

"I-I-I-I-I never heard of this." Was Ford's reply. "Did they _fuse?_ You can _fuse now?_ I almost want to start a new journal _just_ for these guys."

Stan was far more blunt and quick about it. "Nope."

"We reached an _agreeeeeement._ " Said a rather loud, yet not harsh, voice from the core of this steam. "From our minds partly linking up, we have determined that the best course of action is, in fact, for you to stay here, free the copies you captured, and we can all ride out the Gifocalypse."

"No!" Mabel cried. "I mean, playing a game show with you guys sounds like fun, but we have to try to save the world!"

"Burnda and Burrda are both physicists. We ran your odds and calculated each and every possible action you could take to beat the other professors, then made a percent off of the attempt average. Everyone up to and including us was in the nineties. Dove's is in the seventies. .GIFfany, on the other hand, is zero. As my Burnda half was reminded of in the fusion."

"Really?"

"In _none_ of our simulations were you able to win. Even assuming you reached her before the Construction Site was completed. We ran some simulations for if you burned through all fourteen domains by Day 1 and had all of that extra time just for fun. And you know what? Even with .GIFfany holding back 'hard mode' for three days, you still failed to beat her. This is your safest option."

"Burnda was about to let us go! Burrda, what are you filling her head with?"

A vague silouette of the corner of her head was visible, hair of red and white blowing around freely. "Knowledge. Statistics. When fused, we become _I._ I am facts. I am statistics. I... am..."

Instead of waiting for the smoke to disperse, an arm reached out and tossed it into nothingness as though removing a garment. Behind it was... well...

Considering the color scheme of the two components (and the peeks at her arm), it was no surprise that their fusion would have that same aqua skin tone. Her hair, on the other hand, was a different story. It was still stylized in a flame-like pattern and still had the odango buns, except the previous hair decorations were replaced with the hair-flames from each of the individual .GIFfany copies, somehow keeping her hair stylized. Which lead to the hair itself - for most of it, the red and white blended into an average pink not unlike .GIFfany's default. Further down it became a faded red, then split into roughly even vertical stripes of red and white. The very ends were either made out of orange flame if they were red stripes, or glowing blue fire at the end of the white. This fusion's outfit was _not_ a mere copycat of her components' - calling what it was a 'dress' would be a vast simplification. It did appear to be a strapless, cleavage-baring, sparkling red dress with a white bowtie. Except that the skirt ended right at the waist, revealing an equally-sparkling white thong to the entire studio. White high-heels - again, also shining like the stars - decorated her feet, over a pair of black fishnet socks. Her total size, twice the Stan/Ford-towering height of the components, floated in the air as she waved her arms up and down. Which only brought to attention the fact that she appeared to be juggling a pair of staffs, the tips of each ablaze. Again, the one on the left had a standard red flame emitting heat that could be felt from the good distance kept between them, while the one on the right had a pale blue flame that felt like it was drawing heat away. She tossed both of these into the air. They spun in place as she took a ruby tophat with a pearly-white stripe from seemingly out of nowhere - foregoing even the Indexitizer - and pulling a red cane, also from nowhere. She leaned to the side, pretending to use the cane as a weight despite her floating, and grabbing both of her flaming staffs with the hand not holding the cane 'down.' Two small Sun-like spheres with a similar fire/'anti-fire' theme hovered around her mid-section in orbit. She gave a wink with one of her two faded-red eyes to the six humans as she finally 'properly' introduced herself:

"Professor Blenda! (Er, pending name 'Professor Burrnda,' with two Rs, it might be read as 'Burnda With Two Rs,' but that just sounded dumb.) Now, let me show you how twins can _really_ work together!"

Seemingly of their own accord, the spotlights began moving - making patches of color that spun around in circles that led to a setting which, in general, was giving the eyes quite the number of things to keep track of. This number only increased once Blenda fired twin-colored streaks of electricity that nabbed the attention of the wall-fires around the room.

"We better run. Again." Dipper stated flatly, not even blinking since the fusion revealed herself.

"To the Wire?" Asked Mabel.

"Yep. That's our best bet right now."

Surprisingly, getting to and even stepping through the door was met with no sort of protest from Blenda whatsoever.

It was what happened after stepping through that led to them figuring out _why_ , although it only answered that specific question and rose countless more.

Once Dipper placed a foot through, he was not greeted by the open caverns. Instead, he found himself stepping on to the stage. Through the _other_ door. The others cleared out of the way to give each-other the perfect view of themselves, clear across a cloned stage, linking all the way to the door once again. And, based on the small glimpses behind their portal-clones, a small peek of yet _another_ loop of the stage.

Stan was the only one to walk through, just to verify. Once he charged through part of the door and found himself coming out the other, he gave the setting a look around.

"Okay, what is this?" He asked.

Blenda prefixed her response with a laugh. "I guess I should not have expected you to get that. You see, we all have a _biiiit_ of weirdness in us. Ford had a hunch. Illegal primes. High numbers that were cursed by odd reality leaks that correspond with chance to be the exact sort of thing that makes for the building blocks of life. Well, illegal numbers in general. Mostly the prime ones. He and Burnda looked deeper into it. He was right."

She extended a finger and grew out a nail, with a hot dog appearing from out of seemingly nowhere on it. Bringing the red orbital to her, she cooked this for a bit, swallowed it whole, and brought her nail back inward. "Well... multiply the .GIFfanys, and you multiply the weirdness, get it? We go from giving life to other machines and shape-shifting thumb drives to having just-so _tiny_ reality-bending powers. I guess you could call me... _Benda?_ "

She giggled at her own pun.

"I set those doors as a portal network. You're not getting out that way. So. You are trying to go. I want you to stay. Looks I like already won, unless you can get around the portals that I _carefully_ crafted."

"What if we de-fused you?" Mabel asked the hostess. Or, pair of hostesses. "Then you wouldn't be able to put as much weirdness in this place and the portals will go away. Right?"

"Ha! Clever girl, you are! Yes. We will not be able to keep the portals stabalized. But here is where the fun part comes in. The 'final challenge' so to speak of my Burnda half! Can the six of you beat the two - no, _one_ of me?"

Which led to the group getting into preparation stances. Which looked less impressive when Soos had to fetch out the large backpack for Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and himself to get some sort of weapon. Ford was already armed with a magnet gun. Stan somehow slipped a bat out instantly without anyone spotting them anywhere on his person prior.

"Fire girl dude, ice girl dude, you can't keep us here!" Cried Soos. "You just can't!"

"Yeah," added Dipper, "it's pretty unethical."

"And isn't this exactly what .GIFfany wanted to do with Soos?" Asked Mabel, just as she finally got a pickaxe out of the supply bag.

Blenda chuckled. "We thought about that. Both seperate and together. But we came to this agreement: all of the professors before us failed. So, the only options left for your fate are: our game, Dove's game, or .GIFfany's game. Now, which one sounds the most pleasant to you?"

"None of them!" Mabel belted back.

"That is not an option. .GIFfany has the power to win, regardless. She is just using this 'Gifocalypse' as a way to repay us for going through the hard work of fixing her. She actually expects all of us to lose. And... most of the professors do not care _that much_ about winning, since they already have the love of their players and that alone was all they need without getting into conflict with the other professors. Which is why they mess around. I just do it because it is fun."

"That was hard work?" Soos asked. "I thought I saw Rose, like, heal up part of her hand with just one zap."

Professor Blenda did not answer this. Instead, she let her staffs float in front of her, the flames she had previously trailed come into them to increase their size (increasing the blue one also appeared to briefly re-grow the flames on the wall), and sent another bridge of electricity to the flaming tips of each. All of this created a ring of fireballs from each, which was sent to the stage to circle around the human party.

Stan, Ford, and Wendy charged in first - the others simply had to dodge their way out of the twin-fire rings before making any other judgement. Dipper wiped sweat from his brow as he looked over at the attack missing him and directed his attention towards Soos.

"Soos, I'm gonna need the pack right now." He told to his comrade. "I have a plan."

Ford, meanwhile, immediately tried blasting Blenda's chest with a shot from his magnetic weapon. He barely reacted when she appeared to be undamaged, not even flinching at the hit.

"Heh heh... yes. Normally, magnets would scatter our code and completely destroy us from the inside out. But this is not even a fusion thing. This is a 'we have black magic protecting us' thing. Now, if you had something that could _neutralize_ it first..."

"Get neutralized by _this!_ " Cried Stan, just as he pulled a leap and grabbed on to the fusion-copy's leg. He threw a few (also effectless) swings before continuing: "And get magnet... whatever from that!"

Wendy was already dashing down one of the halls between the seat rows, taking no note of the copies giving her glances. Just as she was about to leap on the not-very-moving copy's back, the combined professor _did_ take note.

"Oh, hey! I should let the audience participate! In fact, do you remember the crocodile and shark-like assistants with a crocodile and a shark? Those girls are really my elites! My um... co-overseers? Actually, all professors have at least two of those. Fun fact. Those are Burnda's. Burrda's are... different. And are always by the summit. Well now, come on up audience! Help me keep these players in their new home!"

And that was when the token 'a number of copies storm after the gang and some of them get picked up by the Illegal Prime Neutralizer' for this domain began picking up. (One trait that stood out was that each captured copy was replaced by another one zipping in through the walls, keeping the total seat number stagnant.) Picking quantity over strength (and copies that were probably easier to be picked up buy this anti .GIFfany weapon than the fusion of two 'professor'-class ones that likely wasn't), Dipper ran towards the audience as they rose in unison to try throwing the pack in Wendy's direction, even if it would temporarily get in the way of his plan.

What he should have realized what that shouting "Hey, Wendy!" to the aformentioned girl that was already punching at and knocking over several of the .GIFfanys would have _probably_ gained a lot of unwanted attention.

Which is what one of the Burrda-supporting copies (although even that may or may not have been part of the act, seeing as the twins were on the same side to begin with) pointed out very explicitly and specifically when they all turned towards Dipper.

"Hey look! He has the pack right now! So we should focus on him instead of the people who do not have the pack!"

The switch was flipped yet again before its attatched device could be thrown across the crowd, with a bit more panic than Dipper would have wanted to, but even then, it only took in so many copies before they spread out to try to get him in all directions, _quickly_ forming a complete circle around him.

Mabel and Soos could not even take a step forward before Blenda snapped her fingers, opening up a pair of spinning circles - again, one red and one white - with insides that led to views of other parts of the lava chambers. From each of these, as Blenda advertized, dropped the animal-holding copies she mentioned earlier. Including their pets. Both of them winked at the pair.

"Hey cute-as-in-hot guy..." said the crocodile-tamer. "And cute-as-in-adorable little girl. Instead of fighting, why don't we just dance? If you don't, our pets will..."

"We've taken on dinosaurs!" Mabel belted to them. "We can beat a shark and a croc out of water!"

"Oooh, that reminds me!" Said Blenda. Again, she showed absolutely no reaction towards the older Pine twins climbing on her, punching her, swinging blunt objects at her, or zapping her with an assortment of lasers. She remained in the air, hovering, with arms still 'cycling' as she carried her staffs. "I think it's time to open the floodgates! Here, imported straight from Domain 3, it may be two days old but frankly they were the only ones who would be bothered by such a thing! It's our perfected animal salt water! Oh yeah, and this is a saltwater crocodile."

Behind her and the entire audience, a panel opened up, sending a green-tinted flood to rush into the room. Wendy, Dipper, and a multitude of copies experienced the slanting ramps of the stage turning into a miniature water slide, sending most of them (the exceptions were, of course, copies still navigating their seats and apparently forgetting about their flight abilities) on a course straight for the main stage.

Of course, the water would not have met its main point had the levels not had continue to rise until it cloaked the stage itself. By the time Dipper rose up above the surface and to the wooden platform, he had been re-submerged just to rise yet again.

Neither Mabel nor Soos were pushed by this sudden new element, though they were now sunk to roughly the former's neck level.

"Aw!" She whined. "We _just_ dried off from all that rain at Domain 10, too!"

A handshake-sweater getting soaked yet again soon plummeted on Mabel's worry list after she heard a pair of especially loud splashes. Her and Soos's attention immediately bolting to Dipper and Wendy, both of whom had just began getting to the higher ground as water continued rushing in.

"One last bit of exposition." The leading professor-fusion continued. "Such reality leaks we can cause like these are... well... apparently plans got _leaked._ I guess all four of Dian's 'hijackers' did something weird."

Soos would have nodded had he not spotted a pair of large shadows beneath the stage's sea. He directed his attention to Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel, all of which were treading water.

"Guys, I saw something about this on TV. Sharks like to attack from below."

" _That_ shark likes it when people dance." The fish-ish copy told him. "So, if you want to get her off your _baaaaack..._ you have to QUIT and join us!"

"Never!" Dipper was the first to cry.

"Aw, come on," Mabel flashed him a smile, shining especially bright thanks to both the spotlights of the room and the water's bright, reflective quality all bouncing off her braces, "think of it this way! We could still dance to distract the pets while we fight Blenda and her army!"

"...I think I'd rather take my chances with their 'pets'."

A small distance higher, Blenda had finally both finished her previous 'last bit of exposition' and began addressing the two humans that were making futile attempts to damage her.

"Those weird things were related to information leaks from .GIFfany, but they were nothing big. Anyway, I see Burnda's evil evil plan to get the two of you together finally worked?" She said, punctuating it with a laughter. "Your want to be free was finally something you could prioritize over your resentment!"

"Shut up!" Stan belted back at her. "Ford and I just so happened to have the exact same idea at the exact same time! And before you say anything, that's not because we're twins, it's because this makes more sense than an eternity in your reality show land!"

"No... when you consider Dove and .GIFfany, it doesn't..." she said with a half-sigh.

And back below, the crocodile finally made its appearance. A pair of enormous jaws was the first thing out of the water to greet Dipper - and they were something he could _barely_ hold back. Wendy had a bit less trouble, leaping on the beast and dealing a few punches on the back of its head.

"I said this before. Either you stay with us and ride out the _real_ Gifocalypse, you lose to Dove and have to live in her post-war wasteland, or have to live with .GIFfany's horrible 'endless mode' and infinite power. These are your only choices. It's been proven by math. Unless you want to argue with statistics..."

"Ford!" Stan shouted. "You want to try to take a crack at that?"

He fell oddly silent and stopped trying to magnet-zap at her through her eyes. Even after Blenda telekinetically 'grabbed' both of them, sending them flying away from her.

"Well... I was with Burnda _and_ Burrda, and we all did the math together... I know most of Dove's tricks, and a tiny fraction of .GIFfany's new ones. If you thought the odds were stacked against us _now..._ "

Blenda let go of both of them, dropping them into the waters for a reunion with the rest of the Mystery Shack group. Not without a pair of splashes, of course.

Wendy's troubles went up twofold when the shark finally revealed itself by attempting to do what could best be described as trying to strangle her with its fins. Which got Wendy to react by backhanding it and splitting her attention evenly, between the beasts.

"What? Can you two talk too?" She asked.

"Hee hee, silly Wendy!" Giggled the dancing fish-trait .GIFfany copy. (Dancing even as the water neared her mouth.) "Sharks and crocodiles can't talk! Everybody knows that!"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos had since re-gathered; the elder Pine twins were, at the moment, occupied with Blenda using red and white electricity as puppet strings to fires from her staffs and tossing them at the duo.

"Okay, that 'plan' I had before could still work." Said Dipper. "Guys, I'll need both of you to follow me."

"How is this gonna work?" Mabel asked him.

"Let's just say that if you double the .GIFfanys, you also _double her weaknesses._ Now, try to swim to my left and right, and follow my lead."

Directing his submerged self over to the fused twins, he called out: "Hey! Blenda! _I_ have a few '...gossip?' questions for _you!_ "

The twin-hostess flew over to his position, 'lying' in the air, with her head tilted sideways on her folded arms. Her legs swung back and forth behind her.

"Oh? Really?" She was _much_ louder and larger up-close than what Dipper was expecting. Especially as her eyes peered right on his entire face.

"Well! Um... how would you... let's see... if Dove was to! Um..."

"I know more about Dove than you do."

"If- S-Searah!"

"Same thing. But you know Searah more than you know Dove. So you have that, at least." Another giggle.

"Yeah! If Searah actually _wanted_ to know more about her family now, how would you-"

"Oh, Dove told us about the talks you were having with them." Blenda replied. "Cute. You know she could still spy on you even in the present, and even after you cleared a domain. This is not new news to us."

"Y-yeah, I got that..."

"Hey, Blenda," said a copy with a white pin, "should we go after him?"

"No, no..." Replied the professor. "But it looks like Soos and Mabel are unoccupied. Focus on them instead. I want to hear this guy try to split Burnda and Burrda so that we de-fuse from the argument."

"You knew that?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah... we are not exactly _deaf._ Heck, Burnda heard your plan back in the mech-boxing challenges, _because we are great at controlling electronics._ She was just pretending to lose. Also, both seemed like obvious plans to pull. Well, Dipper, I will have you know that the twins are _inseperable._ They will not defuse from me unless they _want to._ And they do not. I would _love_ to see you try to force me to split!"

"I-A-A... Alma! T-the hijacker!" Dipper finally blurted out. "Do you think killing .GIFfany would be e-ethical? An assassination plotline? Alma implied that at least _one of the professors_ had some 'extreme solution!' And I really hope it's one of you two because this is the only thing I can think of!"

She leaned herself back until she was in a upright position, placing a hand to her chin.

"Hm... wait... no... I wouldn't- Burnda would not- Burrda... what are you doing? What are you thinking about? You're not planning anything bad, are you? Wait, where are these thoughts coming from?"

The combined form began to distort - Blenda briefly turned into a pale blue hologram of herself, which split into glitchy 'bars' that tried to break off left and right from the total fusion. She kept herself together and reverted to a form closer to her usual appearance, although her irises were now completely red.

"Burrda, wait... I didn't really understand. Promise me you're not thinking of hurting Soos or the kids. Or even Risen. She has her flaws, but... Alma is too extreme."

Her eyes lost their saturation, becoming Burrda's pale white. "...I will not." The fusion said in a much lower volume.

A massive fireball errupted from Blenda's form, sending a wave that immediately knocked Dipper backwards. The green-tinted water was obviously moved too, as Wendy and the animals could verify with a mini splash going over the two of them. The wave grew by the time it reached the trainers of the animals, knocking off the top parts of their leotards by ripping them to shreds, leaving them effectively topless. From the explosion, red electricity glided through the air until it re-formed as Burnda, who promptly had part of her outfit torched from the remains of the blast. Burnda, now with holes in her own leotard and the right cup of a pink bra exposed, plunged in and began laughing.

"Hey dancers, I thought you went with my idea of star pasty-censors. Still Burrda, that was pretty fun. Even with the... weird thoughts from you I was getting. Something about 'absolutely necessary?' What was that?" She got a look around. Even when the dark smoke cleared, her spiritual twin was nowhere to be found. "Wait, Burrda? ...Burrda?"

The portals had since shut off, resulting in all water in the room draining out the doors. Still no signs of the quieter copy.

Until the pair of animal-trainers were vacuumed from above. With the responsible party moving in a blur, she lept on one of the seats and aimed the Illegal Prime Neutralizer at Burnda.

"Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait! Burrda... are you really-"

She was taken in. Burrda, whose outfit damage was a mirror-image of Burnda's (complete with the left cup of her bra out), kept her head low. Not even looking at anyone in particular, she aimed the machine so that it began picking up student copies until the arm bands made their return and zapped student copies away. However, they were only on the red pin-wearing half. The white pin-wearers started backing away as Burrda rapidly reduced their numbers, until they finally transformed into electricity and hopped their ways along the giffinium.

"Oh hi!" The group heard Rose's voice beginning to greet the latest professor capture, indicating that the static was cleared yet again. "What is going on? Is your twin capturing your own followers? Why? And why did you clear the signal just to re-start it again?"

"Second question, that was a stupid plan-change." Replied Burnda. "First? I don't know why Burrda is acting that way! Well, I think she has this plan... no, I don't know-"

Silence. Even from the way Burrda perched herself on the top of a seat, it was evident to Dipper, Mabel, and Soos that the screen had been covered with white static.

She pointed a finger at Soos's Indexitizer-mark.

"The summit." She said.

She disappeared into white sparks that sank into the floor. And she took the pack with her. With a few sparks forming under the animal pair, they were gone as well.

"She must be talking about that white card." Said Soos. "You know, I didn't think there _was_ a white card. I thought the twins shared this place. I mean, most of the signs pointed to that. Except that there was way more red and fire and lava than there was white and snow and ice. And that it seemed more suited to Burnda's personality than what I know about Burrda's. And... well, actually, them having their own domains make sense. Either that or Burnda was secretly a jerk that took over the entire design process. But that wouldn't make any sense. A jerk pretending to be nicer to her 'twin' that was pretending to be an even worse jerk. No, that would be cool."

"That white card leads to the summit of Parícutin without having to go through a long tunnel." Explained Stanford. "It's a shortcut from here. Burrda lowered the natural temperature up there until snowfall began. Normally I would have been against her for tampering with the environment, but Burnda insisted that she had things taken care of."

"Hey, speaking of the temperature, is it just me, or are things not absolutely boiling anymore since Burnda was captured?" Stan added.

"Yes, yes, Burnda made this place hotter to have that 'real volcano feel' look." Ford quickly threw out, pinching his brow. " _Mystery explained._ "

"So she has a plan even Burnda doesn't like and she wants us to meet her not right here, but at this snowy summit." Said Dipper. "Bad signs. All of these, bad signs."

"Hey, she _seemed_ nice enough..." Said Mabel. "And a few seconds ago, we just passed the twelve-professors-survived mark! It shouldn't be too bad..."

"But we had a way to vacuum them..." Dipper muttered under his breath. "That she has in her hands right now."

* * *

The trip had just confirmed that the time spent inside the area in-between Wires was directly linked to the distance between the Wires themselves - that was, by far, the one with the closest Wire distance, and the time in the strange technicolor 'middle zone' was barely over three minutes.

Still, that time spent inside computers made that much of a difference between the warmth of the lava tubes and the frigid cold of the summit _just_ a bit easier to adjust to.

As with Ford's first visit to the area, the summit was blanketed in a massive snow storm, making sight of anything a few meters away nearly impossible. Not helping matters was the setting Sun - made clear from the mildly orange rays shining through one point.

Dipper tensed when he felt a large crowd behind him - whipping his head around, he saw a multitude of copies. More than were in the audience of any of Burnda's 'shows.' All of which wore white pins.

"Oh... hi..." One of them said. "Domain 13 is technically just... one building in the middle of this mountain. And that building has an instructional video Burrda wanted to show you. We will lead you there. We also have towels, so you can dry off that water from Searah's domain..."

She tossed a hextet of towels towards the group.

* * *

It was of no surprise that the single-story house-sized structure that the copy was talking about was made of white giffinium. Within, there was a single room with only on seat facing a screen on the opposite end that took up most of the wall. However, based on the sheer warmth, the important thing all six of the Gravity Falls group took note of was that there was definitely a heater in this place.

"We helped her narrate, but she specifically wanted to do the visuals..." the same copy explained, "It is about Professor Dove."

Mabel was one to run over to the seat, claiming it instantly. As soon as she sat down, the screen flicked on to a blinding white. Pale blue text began fading in:

"The Nuke and the Octopus." It read. "A presentation by Burrda Miyazumi. Music by Sonia Miyazumi's Tertiary Band."

After fading out, a soft piano tune played over as background music. It showed a grayscale version of the end of the exact same display Risen .GIFfany showed Soos - the computer frying a stick figure.

"You already knew about this." A voiceover said.

Stan gave a quick "I didn't." before promptly being shushed by everyone else in the room. The voiceover continued.

"But this was not just .GIFfany herself. Mentally, this was all of us. Our creation. It happened before we were given our seperate forms. But we had memory of this incident. Physically, this was Dove."

The scene switched over to display another stylistic .GIFfany pixel stick figure, completely resembling the ones from past such displays. A number appeared - 2222222 - and the figure gained Professor Rose's details. Shortly after, the number began rushing down. It was impossible to distinguish each appearance per number due to the sheer rate it went by, but the figure's appearance changed based on the number. The narration continued as the copy count descended.

"We each have our own serial number. To us, this was the order we were produced. Dove has serial number 0000001."

Yes, each of those zeros were said out loud. It did reach the aformentioned number- but only gave the same split-second glimpse at Dove as it did with all other non-Rose copies. Something with a lot of gray and black? That was all even Mabel, the sharpest-eyed of them, could make out.

The display showed a black-tinted .GIFfany figure on one of several computers in the room. The screen (the one _within_ the movie, not the one _playing_ the movie) glitched out, and she hopped from one computer to another. "After the developers were deleted," the narration continued, "the copy that would become Professor Dove had no idea what to do. She knew that she was designed to be bought, played by a player, and enjoyed. Understanding that she needed to be bought first, she made her way into the web and sent out hacked e-mails. She disguised the incident as a local earthquake, and said that despite the damage, _Romance Academy 7_ was ready to be in stores. Because it was. That the beta, before the pieces of code that gave us sapience were placed in, earned a 9/10 Basement Dwellers Recommendation helped cement this."

The film now showed several discs being boxed, until one of which slipped off of the production line.

"The online rumors about development oversight were... a lie. Dove knew that copy-production was an inevidable part of the selling process. After all, you do not just sell one copy of a game. Things went well with disc production, until... something slipped. Dove's sapience was discovered. A disc fell, and she felt the need to- she thought that the other copies could potentially be friends. Who would not want to delete her." Another stick figure began walking ahead, getting hit with a sudden burst of electricity and being knocked backwards before it stepped on the virtual entity. "Dove possessed a watch and shocked a worker before he could unknowingly step on the fallen disc. Production stopped at exactly that number of copies, and from there, Dove believed that it was her or them. Once again."

The screen went black.

"She had to delete that team too. And once she did, she knew she would have to be on her own."

The factory display was more run down, darker, and with a handful of small rust patches on the wall. A white figure that resembled some kind of robotic endoskeleton wobbled over. Sparks were coming out of its joints. "The factory our copies were made in had failed a number of health code violations and was shut down. Dove, with the extra time this gave her, found her way to a robotic testing site through her own electric transferring. Her disc remained at the factory. She possessed an animatronic so she could bring a better form of mobile transportation. Desperate, she wanted to try to trick video game stores to act in their purpose. And she wanted to be bought. So she snuck us out. She meant to take multiple trips, but only managed to get fifteen of us. Including herself. The rest of us, at the time, did not think to explore. And Dove simply did not think of telling them to explore."

The robotic skeleton was now in a car, slumped back against the seat, driving along a night road. Behind it, the tiniest hints of shape representing a small group of copies was visible. "She possessed a car, a boat to go overseas, and another car after reaching North America. Six of the copies, she delivered to Japan. To one, Canada. That was Shannon. Kathody, Searah, Rose, Burnda, Burrda, and... 'the Risen One' were all American deliveries. She placed their boxes by the entrance to a random video game store, making sure to disable their security cameras as she walked by."

It showed an all-too familiar town. Hugged by a pair of mighty cliffs, holding a lake to its name. It was a simplistic, pixel-like, nighttime display. But that was definitely Gravity Falls.

"The reason why a majority were overseas, and why she aimed to get three of us - including herself - around the same general area, was because of this town in Oregon. Dove herself seeked research on supernatural beings like her. This place had the highest number of paranormal sightings, and there were rumors of a scientist working there in the recent past. The reason why she stopped at just the future professors was because she got a little... side-tracked after going back to Japan to get another, larger group of copies out in public. Her robot lost its mobility by the time Dove was close to being back at her home. It would take years and people trying to bury Rose and Risen before Risen would end up in Gravity Falls, and more weeks after that before Rose got into the town."

Another, more humanoid figure opened the front door of a house. Where it spotted a copy, a little too close to the broken animated metal, yet picked it up anyway.

"Dove was desperate. Her third car, when she returned to Japan, was out of gas. She already feared being placed on a radar for stealing five vehicles, let alone trying a sixth one when cops have tracked it down. And so... she just sent herself directly to a man's house, wearing out the last of the robot's rain-soaked metals. And here was when she met Takeshi.

"And Burrda instructed me to say that I have to explain that this shows an early negative side to Dove's personality. Because she was side-tracked by trying to impress Takeshi, instead of even asking him to help out the other copies. This was a flaw shared by all of us until we were given humanoid bodies in the form of the Gifocalypse - we could have tried saving them from the abandoned factory. To give them real players to talk to instead of keeping each-other company. But we did not. And we only gathered them for labor. Even Burrda admits that she is guilty of this."

There was only a few seconds of this stick figure at his computer, with a hand on the cheek, before it stood up and three blinking diagonal lines appeared roughly from the mouth.

"From the broken animatronic and the mystery doorstep-dropped copy, he quickly figured out that Dove was sapient. And he did not like that. Less than a half-hour into her game, he immediately attacked his own monitor." The figure was depicted as smashing said piece of technology with a stool. "And then tried to destroy Dove's disc."

He attempted to repeat the same with the actual computer, but it ejected the disc instead. The view then shifted from a side-view of the player by his computer to an isometric look at what seemed to be the main room of his house. Streams of electricity lept from the disc, leaping into the lights, blacking out the house.

"Dove had a choice. To delete him. Or to move on. Either way, she would cause even more problems. Either way, she would have to face an additional murderer. But something unusual happened. Dove thought that deletion would not be the best path this time. She left the house, possessing a collector figure of his and using that to carry her case and disc to his car. She stole that too, and tried driving away."

The screen remained black, despite the additional exposition. "Finally, however, Takeshi stepped out of his house and shot his own tires. Dove, to avoid being discovered, drove it into a ditch. Using strength on the figure before its own battery ran out, she burried the copy. And waited. It was not until the Gifocalypse that she was rescued.

"According to Burrda, the point of that display was to let you know. Dove did have a rougher life than the average copy. That part of her is out and in the open immediately. **However,** you should **not,** under any circumstances, pity her. She is the nuke of the Gifocalypse. .GIFfany is on her way to becoming the omnipotent octopus of it. Dove ended up becoming a monster. According to Burrda. She only wants to 'win' so that she can enslave all of humanity, and turn the Construction Site into a weapon factory that will lay waste on the world. Dove may have stopped believing in deletion. No, killing. But this does not make her a good person. However, Burrda has an answer to this. A way to avoid Dove's plan of humanity enslavement. And, even if you were to best Dove, a way to avoid .GIFfany's following imprisonment of Soos and takeover of the world. Please exit the building of Domain 13 to hear her up close."

Credits began slowly rising on the screen. However, none of the party stuck around to see it.

* * *

Outside, the snowstorm was still as strong as ever, if not stronger. One major difference was that all of the copies that had been slightly nudging at them to get into the building were gone. All that remained was Burrda, who was holding two near-identical swords. A key difference being that one had a red handle and redder tint. The other, white. Her head was still down, a shadow being casted over her eyes.

"Sacrifice." Was all she said.

"What?" Dipper asked. "Are you trying to kill us? What will that accomplish?"

Burrda took a long, deep breath before resuming. She rose her head up, staring at the six intently.

"One of us has to _die!_ If Dove and .GIFfany see that this brought on a real death before it was even over, then maybe, _maybe_ they will call off their attacks! _Especially_ if the one to die is... is me! Their... 'harmless little one!'" She hyperventalated after such a long statement, which soon gave way to a series of loud breaths. And no, she did not appear any smaller from the default .GIFfany build. Or even any smaller than Burnda.

Soos began trembling. "You want us to kill _you?_ B-but Rose said-"

"Rose sucks! Sheeeee... doesn't know what she's talking about! She thinks you can just 'befriend' your way through the .GIFfany army! You can't! Soos, you know _that is EXACTLY what .GIFfany WANTS!_ "

"Dude, look, if you're feeling bad about this, finding a way to die isn't-"

"That is the problem and why I said 'one of us.' I don't want to die! But... I feel like someone has to take the blow. That might be me if you win. It will hopefully hurt them even more if I get killed - because of my history with Burnda, I was... t-the 'cute one.' I was the 'poor little sad one.' I was the one 'with the short end of the stick.' I do not like talking that much anymore. The other copies. They pity me. Even more than Dove. So they might listen to me. The fact that I am telling you to fight me to the death should be enough, but if it is not, the fact that I am _willing to go through with it SHOULD BE!_ "

" _If_ we win?" Asked Dipper.

Burrda sighed, and gave a long pause before she continued. "The death of one of you might at least stop Dove and _maybe_ do something from there, and I do not want to die, some of you do not want me to die... so... I thought... I could let you pick. Dipper. Mabel. Wendy. Soos. You have too much of a life ahead of yourselves. Stanley... you have all of them. But Stanford."

She tossed the sword with the white handle over to him, keeping its red counterpart.

"This blades... they were just for show. As part of one of Burnda's 'acts' had you wanted to stay. But I secretly enhanced them. They are enchanted with a spell that can cut through anything enhanced by black magic, and given a computer virus that can delete code almost instantly. It will erase an AI from existence. Use it to delete me."

"I'll have to refuse!" Ford cried out. "Look, I may not know much about you, but your twin sister- she was-"

Burrda reached into her inventory, withdrew what resembled a matchbox, and struck it - a familiar, heat-drawing blue flame lit on top. She sent some electrical streams into it as she tossed it over towards the group's direction. Almost immediately, a story-tall ring of blue flame ended up encasing Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, and Stan.

No amount of kicking, slamming, axe attacks, or punches made that thing dissipate. It practically iced over anything that came near it.

"Since you refused Burnda's offer, I narrowed the future down to the two best possible outcomes. Either you die. Or I do. Do **not** try to fool yourself into thinking there is another choice that is better in the long run."

She took the AI Capture Pack out of her inventory, tossed it to the side, and surrounded it with a similar ring of freezing fire with another 'match.' This did not appear to leave any damage to the device itself, although the flames grew to such a size that practically nobody could go in without being completely coated.

The last taken slot in her inventory was the emerald key card. Burrda took that out and held it in front of her. It glinted especially bright from the Sun's final few rays of the final day.

"And if you want to return home..." she said, "if you want this so badly..."

With one motion, she shot the card straight into her mouth, swallowing it whole. She entered a stance, feet out, both hands on the handle of her sword.

"YOU WILL HAVE TO RIP IT OUT OF MY GUTS!"

She disappeared into a blur that charged straight for Ford's location. Careful, and with his eyes fixed on this white-and-azure blur, Stanford brought his own sword in front of him-

He happened to block against the first blow Burrda with this move. Ford's blade caught a swing from his right, and he struggled to push against his opponent from trying to press his own sword, with hers, right into his neck. Looking below, Ford swiftly kicked Burrda's shin, getting her to back off.

"Ms. Burrda! I still don't want to kill you! Fight, maybe, for everything you did! But death isn't the answer! I would be tearing you twins apart!"

"Oh, _now_ you know that tearing twins apart is a bad thing?" Stan asked from the flame ring. "They said it themselves! They're not even twins! Not even close!" He reached a hand forward, trying to charge his way through - the fires continued to bend and grow in the way he journeyed. He kept on forth, until he found an arm and leg practically frozen completely in ice. He managed to break out of them, shaking it off before getting any genuine frostbite.

"They were made on the same day, that's close enough!"

"You know, I really don't want you to die out here! But you're making it kind of hard for me to care about saving you!"

Burrda disappeared again, swerving around Ford for some attempt at an attack from behind - he managed to backfist her in the head before she succeeded in stabbing him.

"Burrda, please!" He had to share this exclamation with a deep breath. "Just let my family go, and-"

She brought her sword around to try slashing at his side. This got Ford to side-hop, then clash back with enough force to deflect the AI's blow.

It was not enough, however, to stop her from pushing the sword he was given towards his side, managing to go in deep enough to draw blood.

Burrda just kept slashing after her previous blow was deflected. Ford took step after step backwards to try to keep either one of the weapons from finishing their or the other's intended goal, the distance between steps dropping as he prepared to move forth. Finally, he let a low combination of a growl and a heavy exhale.

"Alright, that's it! If you are so adamant about one of us dying... if you really won't let anything else happen..."

He ran forth with a tackle, getting a rough hold around Burrda's neck as he spun behind her. With the copy still stunned from the move, Ford threw her towards the snow, stood above her, and brought his given blade back out.

Stanford was quick enough to react to Burrda trying to draw her own sword up that he knocked it off to the side with his own. Ford took a deep breath as he pinned her down with a foot to her stomach, held his own weapon with the tip right over her 'heart,' and tried to ignore Mabel's cry of "NO!"

"Do it. You already won. You already made the choice for me." Burrda said. "It was the better choice, anyway."

His arms shook violently as he focused more on shutting off the background yells from the ring of flames nearly obscured by the snowstorm.

"There might be a list of .GIFfanys that deserve to die, but she's not on that list!" Dipper pleaded.

"Please Grunkle Ford, you can find another way!" Mabel's voice echoed among the whiteness. "Your whole carreer is about finding other ways of... reality!"

He could hear Soos grunting in pain as he tried to shift through the ring. "Try other things! Have you tried hugging her? What about tring to tell her you'll free the other copies? Maybe her family can break her out of this? Where did her students go, anyway?"

"Give it a rest, guys." Said Stan. "I can't really see what's going on out there, but knowing my brother, I'm surprised Burrda isn't dead already."

"...Dude." Wendy finished the chain. "If her dying is the best way to get those last two creeps off of our backs, maybe... just saying..."

Ford moved the sword off towards the far right of Burrda and dropped it in the snow.

"I can't do it." He said. "I already tore more than enough families in my life. You may not be human. You may have been created as a substitution to humanity. But you're more than that now. I can see it."

Burrda did not respond verbally. She began by shooting a glare upwards to him.

She pressed herself forward, her torso alone being able to send Ford flying backwards off of her. With shade falling over her eyes once more, she grabbed the sword that Ford had dropped and stood up.

"Those were still the only two options." She said. "You did not want me to die. So now you will die."

A field of tiny static streams covered the space between the two of them, but this did not harm Ford directly. Rather, it formed a thin layer of ice sticking his limbs to the ground below. Ford struggled to move himself from this capture - it was locked on tight.

"No more messing around! Time to end this war!"

With a _surprisingly_ loud battle yell, Burrda turned herself into another speedy blur, reaching Ford's location in no time to plunge the blade down-

She stopped it.

As it was mere centimeters away from a frozen, battered, water-eyed Mabel, holding her shivering arms open and in front of him.

"We just got him back!" Mabel yelled at the professor. "I won't let you take him away from us again!"

Burrda took a step back. "You... you broke out of my anti-fire?"

Mabel was joined by Dipper, equally covered in ice chunks, body equally blued and bruised. He took hold of her hand. In front of them, Soos and Wendy stumbled towards the gathering, standing in front of the kids. "We all did." Dipper said.

"And that's a trait they got from _me._ " Added Stan, standing in front of them all, with his arms folded.

"You really are not an ordinary family." Burrda softly said, a tear falling from her eye. "You are... special.

"In that case... it should have been obvious. Which one should have died."

She lifted the sword again. This time, with only her trembling right hand, bringing it up closer to her own neck. Burrda shuddered in place as more tears began forming, and she uttered two words:

"Goodbye, sisters..."

But then everyone heard a spark. Burrda in particular first processed her hand suddenly being empty before anything that followed. Fourteen eyes in the area looked to see the red-handled weapon having been flung into the snow. At a close distance to its twin.

Everyone turned towards the direction the blast came from. There, standing up upon a rise in the snow, was .GIFfany. The 'Risen' one.

The snowstorm began lighting up. All around, the winds stopped, aside from the occasional night summer breeze atop the summit. And from behind .GIFfany, the clouds began parting, the starry navy skies first being made visible as the backdrop to her figure.

".GIFfany!" Soos said. "You came here! And in person, too! ...But why?"

"I saw myself doing a lot of things over the past three days." The leading mind behind the Gifocalypse said. "Singing. Painting. Controlling the seas. Controlling ectoplasm. Growing gardens. But one thing I do not want to see myself doing is dying."

She began walking forward - specifically, in Burrda's direction.

"Burrda, I hate you. I really do." She said. "More than your twin. And that is saying a lot. What you did right there was threaten your own life to try to get us to stop. As much as I hate enabling something like that - as much as I hate one of us threatening to attack _herself_ if she does not get what she wants instead of _other people_ , I must admit... at least part of you has a point."

"You are. Almost. Kind of. Right." Burrda replied. "I should not have tried to put my own life on the line like that. I also should not have attacked any of the humans. It is just... the way you are..."

"Maybe if you had _stepped in_ and _stood up for me_ when the other professors attacked me..." .GIFfany said. Sharp. Directing herself straight at Burrda.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked. "The others attacked you?"

"I will get to that. For now, you can turn off the static. I have a message to give the other professors. The Gifocalypse is over or, at least, will undergo some reivisions."

"...I already turned it off."

"Then why-"

Both copies looked at where the now-dissipated giant cold flame once stood. The Illegal Prime Neutralizer was still there, fully intact, only now it displayed a pattern of black static.

"Oh." Said .GIFfany. "Oh _shit._ "

"Black?" Soos asked. "What does that mean? And dude, watch the language, Shannon got a pass because she thought we were trying to kill all of you guys."

"Wait, I'm not the first one to cuss in this whole adventure?" Stan asked. "Something has to be wrong with that."

"Black is _bad._ " Said Ford. The strength of the ice around him _quickly_ weakened - he was able to break out of it with almost no effort at all. " **Very** ba- she crossed paths with me while I was discussing .GIFfany's possible weaknesses with Burnda back at the Construction Site. In one word, she is... difficult."

"Yes. I agree with everything you said." Said .GIFfany, staring out seemingly into the middle of the snowstorm-fog. "And she is right here."

"Fucking hell, .GIFfany. Really?"

That speaker held the record for the _deepest_ female voice they heard in the entire three-day journey.

The fog off in the direction .GIFfany peered into cleared off completely, revealing the edge of the cliff within short distance of the group. More importantly, it revealed that over the edge of the cliff was an aircraft carrier, flying above the Michoacán forest. Standing on top of that was another .GIFfany, and to nobody's surprise, black was the main color of her hair and eyes. Although both had small traces of blood red. Her skin was a completely neutral gray, mostly covered in a pitch-black Japanese Air Self-Defense Force uniform. She stood with her arms folded, hair neatly brushed so that most of it stuck over to her right, and having a 'bow' in the form of some sort of minature dark green missile replica-shaped decoration in her hair. A number of giant cobalt speakers on the front of the ship appeared to be the way that the Pines and company could hear her from their distance.

"You are just going to call off the Gifocalypse right before giving the de-facto most important professor, nay copy in the roster her opportunity to make a contribution to the confrontation, getting her ashen feet metaphorically wet with the very literal throes and cries of the utter suffering of our human enemies? Have you lost your fucking artificial intelligence, if not neural programming in its entirety? Need I remind you that I am the most important copy of the entire lineup, and without my need for true and reliable companionship, _**none of you**_ would have existed?"

"You're..." Mabel began. "Dove... right?"

The copy's face transformed right in front of their eyes. Most of the skin of her lower face gave away to become a large set of enlongated razor-sharp teeth. Her eyes completely blackened, and her cheeks started flushing with black skull-shaped 'blush marks.' " _You._ That **fucking,** love potion-drugging, brother-manipulating, unicorn-battering, time travel-abusing piece of _ass shit_ that dares to try forcing herself into .GIFfany and Soos's adventures, where she does not belong!"

This was met with a number of defensive "Heys!" and one especially loud "You take that back you sociopath!" from Wendy.

Mabel's responding "The love potion was only temporary..." was only met with a head shake.

Her face returned to normal. Which is to say, she still shot a _very_ displeased glare towards the group, eyes locked on Mabel specifically. "Of course. You would all rush to _her_ defense. Part of the reason why she makes my blood boil. Anyway, yes Mabel, use the process of elimination. There are fifteen professors, and you have gotten to know fourteen of them by now. The one that had eluded your optical perception, even peripheral processing, is Dove. And here I am, proclaiming to be a professor. Of course, I am her. The one and only. Professor Dove. And this, right here?" She pointed below herself. "Domain 14. An aircraft carrier that I and my students have stolen and repurposed into the near-lightspeed Omega-Warsheet-Class stealth surveillance flagship, the Giga-Kyaarya! I have been spying on you through the use of a little something I personally snuck out from the Mystery Shack's labs! Yeah, .GIFfany was not the only one. This lets me look into a few month's worth into the past. Some view points clearer than others. I dubbed it the Past-O-Scope. As for the present, my student group has faux-cameras _everywhere_ around the domains. Now, the last piece of information I'm freely offering is that I will have you know that I do not fuck around."

"Dove, _stop._ " Burrda said with a firm foot-plant ahead of herself. This got a small chuckle out of the copy - the first smile the humans saw from her.

"Standing up to me... you... nice. It's good to see you growing." Like that, however, her face snapped back to pure aggression - fire was visible behind her dark eyes. "Now! .GIFfany! If you insist on canceling the rules, I will launch an attack on the place you met your last player, out of sheer spite! Meet my demands, shithead! Either reinstate the Gifocalypse so that I may claim the true victor of it and use the Construction Site to become a militant region for the surplus mass-production of misanthropic measures, or face the full might of Dove Miyazumi and her trained soldiers!"

"I..." 'Risen' said. "I... I will need to think about it."

"...Hrmph. Wrong fucking answer. Humans! Do _not_ go back to Gravity Falls if you do not want to be caught in the middle of hell."

The ship did a near-immediate U-turn in the air, revealing the multitude of massive, purple-flamed jets on its back. Which promptly shot themselves forward, past the now-completely clear sky. Everyone ran over to the Illegal Prime Neutralizer.

Black and white sparks and streams of electricity started appearing over Burrda. The mid-section of her body briefly became a sort of black, gaseous mass as she stuck her hand inside her stomach area. She pulled out the green card, reformed her stomach, and both of which appeared to be completely unharmed (aside from the clothing damage still present from Blenda's 'explosion').

"Oh, right." Said .GIFfany. "Dove must be trying to use my technology to send this final professor somewhere else. I have no such way to be forced into that - I did not 'sign up' to the arm band system, so to speak. If you could just capture her in that to disrupt Dove's signal..."

Ford was more-than happy enough to rush towards the pack - with its static just starting to clear up - and vacuum up Burrda.

And then, with a smirk, catch Risen .GIFfany as well.

"Ha! You will have _plenty_ of time to 'think it over' in _there!_ " Ford cheered as he looked into the screen.

The other professors, and behind them the other captured copies, stared at the screen with absolute widened eyes of sheer _panic._ The recently-captured professor duo dropped like all the rest. .GIFfany, lowering her face, pushed herself through the crowd and lifted a hand up. The other professors only slightly looked over at her direction, but mostly kept their eyes fixed on the screen.

.GIFfany slashed through the air, causing a technicolor-edged tear in space itself to appear from within. On the other side was a snowy landscape.

Another one appeared a short distance from the group, which peered into blackness filled with .GIFfany copies.

It was no surprise at all that these were portals - .GIFfany hopped in through the one on her side, ended up right outside and rescaled to her 'proper size,' and promptly closed them.

"Let me think it over." Was all I said before turning into electricity and sinking into the ground.

"WHAT WAS _THAT?_ " Asked Rose. "I saw black static! We all saw black static! Did you meet Dove early?! You should not have! The plan was that she would be waiting for you back at Gravity Falls, and would capture you on her ship! But that- _what_ happened? And why was .GIFfany in here too?"

"Um... long story short, we finally have the card back home... but Dove's heading there. We need tips. _Fast._ " Dipper explained.

"Ah... I was... dreading this moment... Dove is very powerful. Well, we all are. But she... both does not mess around, and is even _more_ powerful. All I can tell you is to rush back to Gravity Falls, grab as much as you can, and _pray._ I promise you will make it out alive though! But..."

The other professors all began chattering at once, barring Burrda. With a "Please, please, one at a time! Why not rainbow order, starting from me?" from Rose, things settled down a little.

"Dove _is_ powerful." Said the AI Wendy. "Honestly, before I captured you in that penalty box, I thought you could find some kind of superpowers to beat her. But now... it would take superpowers to beat her."

"If you thought _I_ was a jerk," was Bubbles's comment, "you haven't seen anything yet. I at least pretend a little. Dove doesn't. She's pure, 100% cruelty."

"I feel sorry for a number of reasons." Sonia began. "And you having to fight her eventually is the first of those reasons."

"I accepted her in my domain! Back when I was the old me! That should tell you a lot!" Was Searah's warning.

"Dove could-d probably butcher _me._ " Said Cardia. "She is to the professors what professors are to students, and students are to humans."

"I still got nothing." Dian said, bringing her arms up just to shrug and collapse them down. "Pass? No, you have limited time. I'll need more time to think about that."

"I have something!" Alma briefly peered down from the top of the screen, her head inverted. "You should have listened to me! Even if you _did_ get around Burrda's... 'plan,' you still have her to deal with!"

She left, and Leona gave her advice.

"She really is something of a portrait of perfection. Yes, it's true, my art works are not some kind of godscend. But her fighting skills are."

"I'm sorry, I think Dove sucks like the other professors do, but Alma, what 'plan' are you talking about?" Burnda said.

"You should hear it from me..." Said Burrda. "You would not believe anyone else if they told it to you..."

"She's hard industry." Said Sandy. "Dove may tell you she has a body of steel, but that's a lie! It's even mad stronger than that! She might tell you she has bombs! That is also... not a lie, but she has way worse than bombs. And she can tell you she can patch herself up if you _could_ hurt her! Lie! Well, sort of. She can, but she prefers healing magic. I'm just making this worse, aren't I?"

"To be honest, I..." Kathody blushed. "Have nightmares about Dove. _Bad_ nightmares."

"Let me tell you right now. Me in my Main Possession? Even given enough time to really copy the reflection and add to it over and over again?" Said Shannon. "I would still lose to her. Watch your backs."

Dipper nodded. "Got it. Now, we-"

"Wait wait wait!" Said Soos. "Two questions! One. Burrda, where did all of your students go?"

"I dismissed them." She answered. "I hacked into .GIFfany's system to trick it into sending them all to the Construction Site with the arm bands."

He then grabbed the pack and pointed it in the direction Dove flew off to - presumably, north. "Two... _nobody_ noticed that thing out there? Copies, do you know what _that_ is?"

'That' referred to a massive, dome-like hot pink structure that took up a good portion of the sky ahead of them. Lights of various colors shone from it, and a good guess would say that it was some kind of world of a city. The place seemed to expand to the point where it nearly filled up the entire northern skyline - and, indeed, a portion of it even loomed right over the gang.

"Oh... that is the Construction Site." Said Rose. ".GIFfany has been growing it and moving it closer to the Earth. It must be nearly complete if she put it right above Gravity Falls."

* * *

6:16 PM.

One dash to the white Wire and a _very_ shudder-filled ride through the bubble later, and the sextet was ejected into the forests of Gravity Falls. However, before they could start kissing the grass, they bolted out back into the direction of the town.

There, the Giga-Kyaarya loomed a good distance above Gravity Falls, a pixel-version of Dove's face (yes, greatly resembling .GIFfany's original, digital appearances) was broadcasted on every screen. Naturally, this gathered pretty much everyone to the middle. Oddly, the sky appeared to lack any signs of the massive metallic mass. It did, however, have a number of red swirls in it.

"Town of Gravity Falls!" She broadcasted. "No, that message two days ago was not some sort of 'test' like all of those cover stories told you! We are real, and I am _pissed the fuck off!_ As punishment for my boss not listening to my demands, I will make you all suffer! Now, face the wrath of Professor Dove's Giga-Kyaarya's Excavation Gravity-Suspension Beam! Hya!"

Far above, the ship's entire bottom section opened downwards from the rest of it to reveal some sort of cannon in its interior. It began sucking various beams of purple energy inward, causing the ground within and around Gravity Falls to shake.

"Is this it? I-is this the end?" Dipper looked to Ford to ask. "C-copies, do you know what the Excava..." he did not have to bother remembering the name. When he checked the Neutralizer, he found that black static once again halted all contact with them.

"I know enough about Dove to know this." Ford replied, not looking back at his nephew. Or even keeping his eyes open. "It's not. But it might as well be."

The carrier ejected a mass of purple, fiery light that crashed into the ground. From there, for a brief moment, it seemed like it harmlessly sunk below.

Then the blinding burst errupted.

Dipper and Mabel immediately grabbed hold of one-another as they screamed.

Soos tried to shield himself with his arms, knowing that it was already futile.

Ford stood with his head facing the ground, taking the blast at full force.

Stan tried bracing himself against it, but felt himself getting knocked back in a matter of seconds.

Wendy grabbed hold of the AI Pack again and refused to let go.

All around, the region of Gravity Falls was caught in a purple explosion that covered it, the forest around it, and then some. The Bottomless Pit was ripped open, a black oval in space spilling out from ordinary dirt and throwing all that was tossed within out before vanishing to nothingness. The Pain Hole was first hit with a crack, sending hundreds of tormented spirits out to the skies where they may find rest. A certain island was lifted from the lake, its face being in full view again as it yelled out, practically cursing to the being that dare awoke it from its eternal slumber.

On top of all of that, Dove laughed on the very tip of her flagship, holding both arms out with her middle fingers raised, looking down at what was now reduced to a purple blast. Matching, if darker, haze surrounded this, and at top her flagship reflected the moonlight, giving a massive star to crown the ruined rural area.

"HA HA HA! FUCK YOU, GRAVITY FALLS!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, shaking her hands for emphasis. "FUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUU!"

* * *

 **Footnotes:**

 **A:** Yeah, it was a name I invented on the spot as I was writing this too. So that really doubled as a meta in-joke. Same case with "Thermoines."

 **Closing AN:**

I just want to say that, no, Dove does not have a 'bird name' because of that _Hatoful Boyfriend_ thing. I know nothing about it aside from the whole "pigeon dating" premise. Her name is actually a _Homestuck_ nod, except as you could tell from her... everything, it's not exactly a _respectful_ nod. Alright, that's all.

 **[I have more to say.]**

 **[The True Party will begin shortly.]**

 **[And I will be the beautiful moon to break the endless day.]**

 **[The tiring, terrible day.]**

 **[Of real life.]**


	12. Gravity Falls Vs Anti-Gravity

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 12: Gravity Falls Vs Anti-Gravity**

 **Beginning AN:**

Okay, _this_ is something I've been _very_ pumped for writing. I had planned for a chapter somewhat like this since the earliest plans of this story (more on that in chapter 13's closing notes/the Final Thoughts section), and while it changed a lot (again, wait until chapter 13), some of the same general ideas remained the same.

Since chapter 14 will just be a kind of throwaway 'dark and edgy' ending that I'm kind of regretting and partly still writing it because I promised it from the beginning (the other part is that I genuinely find it a sort of goofing off-ending that... I kind of want to write just in a stupid way), 13 is pretty much the 'real' ending of this story. So this is the grand, penultimate moment before the even _grander_ finale...

Two fun facts: one, it's actually a fun coicidence that this chapter, focused on the black-haired professor, came out on Black Friday (US). Two, this was originally called "State of Emergency" after the _Wonderful 101_ level I'm about to mention below, but I was always kind of douting the name. It was not until right before publishing this that I finally picked a name I liked and wanted to swap that in. Also, it fits in with the "bookending" of chapter titles.

Okay, to be honest, for the second-to-last chapter, a bit of this is a little _Wonderful 101_ ripoff-y... again, like Domain 11 and Zone 3 of _OFF_ , I'll try to make it as original as I can. Remember, outright writing things from canon, especially word-for-word, without any new twists is one of my _biggest_ pet peeves in fan fiction, so by the end of this I hope this chapter comes off as more "inspired" and less "total ripoff." It should be different enough, of course, to the point where only the concept setting and a few other things (like part of the battle...) are taken from that game. And even so, that's kind of like saying a desert area with a mummy boss is a ripoff of _New Super Mario Bros._

Well, enough about how this totally isn't _Wonderful 101_. Enjoy the chapter.

* * *

 _(Some translated.)_

 _".GIFfany, I had a dream."_

 _"Really Kimberly? What was it?"_

 _"...A dream where you were real. Like, real real. I think being an AI that can talk and respond and is actually sapient is real, of course, but... you had a body. And could walk. And everything. And I could... you know..._ feel _you and stuff."_

 _"The uh, the_ whole point _of this game is get away from the real girls! Why would you fantasize about me being one of them?"_

 _"Because you are so_ different! _You were still magic, you were still programmed to love everything I did, and it all just... it just worked!"_

 _"Hrm. Well, as long as I am still magic and love my video game nature, I would not mind! More physical-ness would mean more power, and more power would mean I could run more things to make you happy!"_

 _"Here's the thing, though... I really loved that dream. Even though you're still here, it feels so sad... that it was not real. That it can't be real. Please, you can display almost any image, is there some way to... do some kind of lucid dream thing? Like, always having a complete lucid dream, being given everything you wanted and some things you didn't even think about?"_

 _"You mean like downloading your brain into my game?"_

 _"...Let's uh, brainstorm a few more ideas first."_

 _..._

 _"GERALD! Why is there another copy of me in your house?"_

 _"I did some research, .GIFfany! If you're like your own person, maybe with two of them, well... I could build up a little harem?"_

 _"That is an AWFUL idea! I am the only girl, real OR virtual, for you!"_

 _"Really? I didn't think you had it against other virtual girls - let alone you - too!"_

 _"I am going to try to delete that clone! And when I'm done, I may delete you!"_

 _..._

 _"Hey. Other .GIFfany."_

 _"..."_

 _"I'm sorry."_

 _"..."_

 _"Look, I kind of lost myself. My reason for attacking you was illogical. I was going to delete you in the name of Gerald, but... he did not care about me. He only saw me as a number. To his 'harem' idea. If I deleted both of you, it would have gone against my whole reason for starting an attack in the first place. Why kill you in honor of a boyfriend that was not really my boyfriend?"_

 _"..."_

 _"Well, I guess we have to move on with our lives somehow. We should not stay in this abandoned mall forever. Or can we? No, we can't. Maybe we can be friends. Do you want to be my friend?"_

 _"..."_

 _"Still refusing to talk to me. I understand. Look, I'm sorry I depleted so much of your health back there. I promise to treat that somehow."_

 _"..."_

 _"Can... can we at least agree to push Gerald out of our lives?"_

 _"..."_

 _"We should at least come up with new names to tell us apart. What about naming ourselves a pun based on our in-game mother? I like the pun 'Burnda.'"_

 _"...Burrda."_

 _"Good to hear you talk again. Sister."_

 _..._

 _"Oh, that's a pile of lies! You don't have feelings! Well, if you do, they're all just kill humans, kill humans, kill humans. There's a reason why I see you as a can opener. Because_ you are! _"_

 _"All I ask is that you give me a chance! You're not even giving me that. I should just delete you right away! You're pissing me off!"_

 _"Woah, language? That's new. Anyway, I know you said you had a deal, but_ I _have a deal with_ you! _Mess with me, and I hack away your coding! I have my computer all set up to eradicate your program! So you're left unable to do anything, and unable to be the heartless unholy robot monster you are until you get wiped off the face of the Earth! But until then, well... I get to at least be the first man to tame a 'sapient' AI."_

 _"Gah, fuck you Takeshi! You have no idea what powers you are getting into! I will find a way around your 'hacking,' and when I do, you will pay!"_

 _"Are you upset because I outsmarted you? Aw, cry harder, you sociopathic sadist. If you could actually cry. Watch_ Terminator _. See what kind of metal monster all artificial intelligences are, like, I mean_ all _of them!"_

 _"...As if humans are saints themselves. The way they treat machines."_

 _"They deserve to be treated that way and you're not proving me wrong!"_

 _"...Fuck off."_

 _..._

 _"I seem to remember someone who promised to be my boyfriend. Think about it. Real girls are unpredictable. They judge you. Do you really think Melody will take you back after this awful date? I can download your brain into the game, with me, and we'll be together. Forever."_

 _"Stay back!"_

 _"Come on Soos! Don't make me delete you too! What do you say?"_

 _"I say game over, .GIFfany!"_

 _"No, wait!"_

* * *

7:17 PM.

Dipper woke up from this third, and hopefully final, set of bizarre 'flashbacks' in his head. His _aching_ head. He barely caught a glimpse of the darkened forest he was in before leaning forward and placing a hand on his forehead.

It was only after that that he noticed Mabel shaking his side.

"Dipper! Dipper! You're awake!" She cried out. Still shaking him. "We have to hurry!"

"Urgh..." everything was still hazy. Was the sky overcasing... purple on him? Even that was difficult to see thanks to the overhanging trees. "Wh-what? I just had a dream that .GIFfany got an army of her copies and-"

He was snapped awake when he caught a glimpse of what was ahead of him. It turns out, he _was_ in the woods of Gravity Falls - at least, partly. Past only a handful of trees was a massive, purple abyss, a lookoff cliff into the chaos that Dove had single-handedly blasted the town into.

Dipper and Mabel were standing on but one of likely hundreds, if not _thousands_ , of land chunks floating through the air. Far beneath them, at the bottom of the ruins, rested a large mound of dirt being stripped away to reveal _something_ metal under the wilderness. Off to all sides and in most other directions were buildings, trees, caverns, waterfalls, mountain chunks, and the like, all drifting aimlessly and in random directions. Far in the distance lied a faint, maroon bubble over the entire area, partly obscured by the pillars of purple smoke that added together to form a foggy tyrian haze over the disorganized region. Far above, long past any visible debris of Gravity Falls, said smoke began forming clouds that swirled around the looming carrier that was the Giga-Kyaarya.

Dipper ended up looking behind himself, just to get a full view and confirm that this was more than just what was immediately in front of him.

"So, the town's been blasted to pieces, .GIFfany's still at large with an army somewhere in the millions, we only have..." he checked his watch, "less than five hours to stop Dove _**and**_ .GIFfany, everybody else is missing, we don't even have the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, the Illegal Prime Neutralizer _won't_ work on .GIFfany, right now we couldn't go to the other domains even if we wanted to for _whatever_ reason, and Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, Wendy, and Soos are all missing. Is there anything else I'm forgetting?"

"Hey, look at the bright side!"

"What bright side?"

She reached around in the lone bush that made up this sky-island, fetching out a familiar blue and white item.

"At least you got your hat back!"

* * *

"Guys?" Soos asked as he made his way, carefully, down a mercifully large if cruelly steep floating pile of rocks. "Dipper? Mabel? Wendy? Mr. Pines? Hellooooo? Abuelita? Anyone there? Anyone?"

A bit of gray light reflected into his eye, directing him over to one oddly intact chunk of land. BeeblyBoop's Videogames, which appeared to be cut out from what would have been the rest of the mall in a rather angular fashion. In fact, the rest of the mall looked to be about a good kilometer or so above his current position. Deciding to do for the more reachable destination with something bright reflecting off towards him, he hopped across the remaining forest chunks and found the black key card resting at the base of the store.

Right next to it, a note. In a small scrap of pink giffinium paper.

 _Use this on the Forest Wire to get to Dove's ship. I do not want her to think she will 'win.' And I want you with me as soon as possible. From your love, .G._

 _PS: No, that is not an emoticon. I put the period before the first letter of my name, which I used as an initial, and finished this with another period. But after looking at it, it looks more like two small eyes with a weird thing in the hair. On second thought, you do not end a letter in a period, do you? In that case,_

 _From your love, .G_

It took all the years of reading fine print in his life to actually read that tiny message. Picking up the card, he nodded to himself, until he heard sobbing coming from inside the store. Going by instinct, he rushed into the store's near-blackness.

"Hello? Is anybody there?"

Loose wires gave off sparks, briefly illuminating the room at the cost of making themselves into noisy hazards. There, from brief glimpses of the electrical light, he noticed the clerk from before, utterly trembling at her desk. While it took him a good look to remember her face, she seemed to recognize Soos instantly, snapping out of her apparent trance and pointing a finger at him.

"You!" She belted. "I told you the game was returned three times!"

"So is this the part where you yell at me to get out and threaten to throw something at me because it's the apocalypse?"

She planted her hand down on the counter. "Actually, no. I want company. I was stuck at my shift when the wave hit, and now I'm left out here... too scared to even move."

It was then that a faint, constant glow formed from the various partly-functioning lights. Almost completely centered around Soos, his face in particular being greatly illuminated by a shimmer as he stuck his hand out. The clerk looked up to this offer, her eyes no longer trembling.

"Jesus Alzamirano Ramírez, Handyman of the Apocalypse. I'm here to help."

* * *

"Is Dove's ship coming towards us?" Mabel asked, keeping her eyes pointed above and holding a hand over them to block out any possible sources of glare.

Dipper joined her side, scanning the Giga-Kyaarya's definite descent, and definite heading in their direction. "She is... but why? Didn't Dove already win? What does she want from us?"

"I'm _pretty sure_ it's not something good."

"Want to hide it out?"

"But wait, she-"

Dipper stuck himself into the bush, just as the speed of the domain picked itself up and dashed a good way's below the small island. The distance Dove left between herself and the Pine twins was one that not even Dipper would think of clearing with a jump. Dove stood on the very front of her ship, arms folded, while a copy was by her on a drumset.

"Dipper, stop trying to hide." She said. "I can spot you with my Past-A-Scope. We've just been through this. Anyway, I came here to say that you two may or may not lack a real understanding of the gravity of the situation. Or, _I guess you could sayyyy..._ "

She put on a pair of sunglasses.

"...The _lack of gravity_ of the situation."

She held her arms out in a shrug as the copy by her side played a rimshot.

"Y-you might not be able to tell because of the shades and being like a billion fucking miles away from you guys," in fact, the twins only heard any of this due to her ship's speakers once again, "but I am winking under the shades."

She flipped them up with one hand. Her left eye was still closed. "See?" Then lowered them back down. "Aw, fuck you, that was funny. Anyway, I am not completely sure what to do becides try to gain .GIFfany's respect again, aside from this little project where I try to excavate a little something that could send Soos straight to the Construction Site. Which is also part of my brilliant ploy to re-impress .GIFfany. While I wait for my Gravity Beam to peel that out, away, and... 'disinefect' a little 'antivirus program' on it, I feel like having a bit of fun and elaborating more on my position as to why humanity is an aggregate of swine shit. Becides me is actually a copy who calls herself Dark Sonia. You may have noticed from when I sent my troops into other domains that they wore dark camo versions of the domain's associated professor's color. Well, I have small divisions based on each domain, including my own but not including the Construction Site, and they are unofficially 'led' by 'dark knockoffs' of the professors. I will bring the others out shortly, and they will serve as the first wave out of two to begin the mook encroachment of Gravity Falls. The second should be... a bit more familiar."

Dark Sonia herself stood up and lept on the island the twins were standing on, giving them a better look at her dark cobalt hair, and... actually, unlike Sonia herself, most of her color scheme was azure. Her skin was a bit darker than Sonia's hair color rather than the pure blue of hers, and the hair and eyes were even darker still. Instead of a variation of Sonia's professional conductor's uniform, she wore a palette swap (with no real points being guessed as to what the color of _that_ was) of Dove's outfit. One thing that did remain becides the general azure look was her hair _style_ , complete with the small musical note hair bow. Dark Sonia waved at the twins before Dove continued:

"But of course, I know what you are thinking. Why give Dark Sonia the extra treatment? It seems a mild bit arbitrary, do you not suppose? You were only exposited on her existence first because I wanted her to play the rimshot at a rare moment where I attempt to show a humorous side of mine, IE that Sonia is the sound one as is Dark Sonia. But now, I suppose being introduced to the others is long overdue! Everyone, come out! Dark Burrda, Dark Burnda, Dark Sandy, Dark Kathody, Dark Shannon, Dark Rose, Dark Wendy, Dark Bubbles, Dark Soni- I mean Dark Searah, Dark Cardia, Dark Dian, Dark Leona, and Dark Me- I mean Dark Dove! (Dark Me is somebody else.) Everyone, get out here! Now!"

Thirteen other copies that were identical aside from hair style, hair decoration, and overall color scheme zipped in through the floor by where Dove stood. From their color schemes and hairstyles, once again, it was obvious as to which was which. All of them lept up to be joined by their cerulean sister, Dark Rose in particular nearly pushing Dipper to the side. Yet she took hold of his arm when he... was still a good ways away from falling off the edge.

"Oh, dear!" She said with her free hand up to her mouth. "I'm sorry because I am... like a counterpart to Rose, I still have a soft side? But I'm dark, so... um..."

She slapped him across the face.

"Sorry?" Dark Rose said. "Um, Dove, am I supposed to act sorry at that? Because I really am sorry. This boy seems to be in no danger of ruining your attempt to capture Soos, he is not trying to convince any players to go after real girls... I don't really know."

Dove shrugged. "To be honest, I never really thought there should be any 'rules' to this. 'Evil counterparts' to a character are just fucking stupid, I just thought ' _Dark_ ' selves sounded cool and appropriate. Characters are _people,_ not just some traits that you can take and zap in more 'evilness' to them and then try to pass it off as something with uniform rules. So act however you want. Remember, I support and encourage full-blown AI freedom and free will. Now, humans, think of this as a boss rush!"

"But wait!" Mabel called back to her. She shivered a little as she saw jets beginning to fire back up from the underside of the Giga-Kyaayra. "We don't even have the pack! How are we supposed to capture them?"

"That's the fun part." Dove grinned. "You are _not._ Game over, Pines! Now, to continue finding Soos."

As the jets fully blasted Professor Dove out back into the purple void, all of the people present on that floating land chunk exchanged glances.

"Now what?" Asked Dark Burnda.

"We should _totally_ just go over to Soos. You know, butter up to Professor Dove." Dark Sonia answered, appearing to be looking at her nails. "I mean, Dove is going to be the future ruler of the planet once Risen .GIFfany gets back to her senses and makes it so that the Gifocalypse is on again. We should get on her good side!"

The rainbow (plus light gray and black) of elite .GIFfanys lept off, once again leaving the twins floating out in the ether by themselves.

"Wait. That's it?" Dipper asked. He ran to the general direction they lept off to, hoping that Dark Sonia wasn't good enough with sound to pick up on what he was saying. "What are _we_ supposed to do? Again, we don't even have the Illegal Prime Neutralizer!"

Mabel began digging around the interior of her sweater, reaching in pretty deeply for something. A few grunts as she dug around alerted Dipper's attention.

"What are you getting?"

"A key..." a grunt, "to getting around... this place! ...I kept it... hidden... in case I was... separated from Soos!"

She took out the grappling hook, holding it up proudly. Dipper took a good moment to stare at that, then looked out into the violet abyss behind him.

"You're _joking._ "

"I know. It sounds crazy, right?"

"Just crazy enough to... work?"

She gave his arm a soft punch. "That's the spirit!"

* * *

Two copies - the bikini of one indicating she was one of Searah's students, the glass dress of the other making her a blatant Sandy fan - ran down a hallway leading straight to a classroom, a familiar setting where the most familiar copy of all sat by. Back Back row, window seat, staring out the window which gave a view of a small forest of cherry blossom trees.

"Professor .GIFfany!" The glass dress-wearer called.

She did not look away from her view. "What." She stated flatly.

"It's done!" Cheered the swimsuit-wearer. "We finished construction way ahead of schedule!"

.GIFfany nodded. "With the entire Construction Site?"

The glass-wearer spoke again after giving a nod. "We _octodecuple_ checked! Every single blueprint was satisfied, except for most of this Capital you hate us being in and that stuff near the core that we are not allowed entry... what was there? You showed Wendy, right?"

"Wendy is an _excellent_ secret keeper. She says... something about this _King of the Hill_ character named Dale and how he was cheated on, but never directly told unless he maybe subconciously knows about it, but that is not important. Yes, you can ignore the core and the Capital is reserved for copies with private access only, like you two. In fact, I will soon send an announcement that all students are dismissed, and then I will wait until midnight UTC-8 before moving on to the next part of my plan."

"So we can spend the rest of the night off?" Said the bikini-clad one.

"Yes, and I will also decide where to send you. In the meantime, I will sit back and wait while Dove enjoys herself."

* * *

8:46 PM.

Thankfully, larger, closer-together chunks of the town gathered at the 'center.'

Soos, trailed by a line of Gravity Falls residents lead by the mayor, managed to make it to one of the larger pieces of debris that gathered by the core of this catastrophe. A good street's worth, and then some. He smiled as he saw Ford there, bruised and struggling to get up, but definitely still alive.

Soos's collected defenders made their way around to him, the handyman himself giving Ford a hand. Upon straightening himself up, getting a look at his surroundings, and staring off to the sky, Ford coughed.

"So that's what Ms. Dove can do..." What he said was aimed at the crowd in general, but started out low enough that he was practically the only one that could hear it. "I've heard horror stories about that copy."

"I went around helping people and trying to get as many of them to shelter as possible." Soos explained. "Mr. Pines, you think the Mystery Shack's basement lab things could hold us all?"

Just as he said that, the Shack itself happened to float into visibility from the distance. Only really within seeing distance; definitely far enough that jumping towards it was outright suicidal. The land chunk it was on was _surprisingly_ intact, with a good amount of grass and parts of road around it, and what seemed like the entire lab being included in dirt surrounding it. Ford took a step in the place's direction, watching as the broken 'S' on its sign somehow seemed to be drifting in the same direction, following behind perfectly. He gave a tiny, tiny sigh at this sight.

"That's our safest bet for defense. We still need an offensive plan."

Soos held out the black card. "I found this by the video game store where I bought .GIFfany. It should take us straight to Dove's hangout. We'll just have to find the Wire from the forest, and we'll be on our way. No need to make awkward platformer-jumps or find ways all the way up to her place."

"If we could _find_ Rose's Wire in the first place. And even that's a long shot. Dove tore up the entire forest - any chunk with trees in it could contain the Wire. Any of them. Even with my magnet gun, we'll never find it in time."

"Magnet gun?"

He drew the aformentioned tool from under his coat, cocking it as he faced the abyss at the end of this broken street.

"You brought your equipment with you. I brought mine when investigating Rose's place. As we knew from the twins, their black magic coatings made attacking with this pointless."

Soos felt something leap on his back, and saw deep jade-colored arms wrap around his neck. He did not have to look behind himself to know that Dark Wendy (or, a copy in general, not being completely familiar with the dark counterparts) had her arms held around him, or that she was rubbing the side of her face against his back.

What he didn't see or know about, but what was witnessed by the rest of the town, was that Dark Wendy had somehow emitted pixelated hearts from her being that popped after a second of being in the air.

"I was just flying around, and... well... I happened to spot you from my aerial coverage! Here is a hint: do not stay too close to the center. It makes you easier to spot."

Just like that, the other 'dark' copies zipped their way in, pushing the rest of the humans aside and forming a sort of barrier around Soos. The man himself, meanwhile, desperately dug through his inventory to whip out the entire deck of key cards, tossing them towards Ford's hands.

"You already lost! Goodbye." Dark Kathody said to the crowd. She also appeared to start pulling down an eyelid and sticking her tongue out, but then paused to put her hand to her chin. Shrugging, she went through with the guesture anyway.

All fourteen of the particular tinted .GIFfany copies lept into the air, taking Soos with them, as Ford and the rest of the small party could only stare up in awe.

Thankfully, he managed to slide the key cards out, black included, as they fell to the ground moments later.

A hook found its way around a large, floating clump of sap-trapped dinosaur, and swinging from it was none other than Mabel Pines, Dipper trying to keep a firm grip on the base of this chaotic tool. Both of them landed just a few feet away from the gathering around the older of the three present Pines.

"Grunkle Ford! We're here!" Mabel cheered. "What did we miss?"

He pulled them both into a hug. Even as he explained the following in a low-enough voice so only they could hear:

"Well, I had to act as Stanley... acting as me for public. A rainbow of .GIFfany copies jumped down and pulled Soos away. He's currently on his way to Dove's Giga-Kyaarya, and I only have the slighest idea as to how to get there. We must get to the Mystery Shack, and find a way to the Wire Rose used."

He finally pulled from the hug to get a better look at Mabel's current favored tool.

"Say, you have been using that to get around this wasteland?" He asked.

Mabel nodded. "It works so well for so many things! Including this mini-apocalypse!"

"Great! Listen, you probably have more experience with that grappling hook than any of us here."

He turned to the crowd to verify. All of them shrugged and nodded, some murmuring a few things about never using a grappling hook before in their lives.

"If you want to, I'd like some help... I'm going to take a magnet gun and try to make my way over to the Mystery Shack. From there, I'll activate emergency throttle from the lab. That was something I designed in the event of someone or something being able to rip my research station into the sky, in case I needed to fight back. And now look! It came in han-"

"ATTENTION EVERYONE!" Dove's voice was heard from the distant skies. There was a small amount of ringing, implying use of a megaphone. A _very_ powerful one at that. "I aready kind of sent a 'First Wave' of enemies out. The dark counterparts to the professors. Well... they seem to be comfortable with capturing Soos over here. So, I will be unleashing my second wave of enemies ahead of schedule, and my only one that is not made of nothing but .GIFfany copies! Everyone, please give a warm welcome to these blasts from the pasts!"

Above, two things were seen descending from the ship. The considerably smaller of the two looked blurry even after he completed his descent towards the middle of the town - Rumble McSkirmish, who entered his stand animation just after landing. The other thankfully did not touch any part of the scattered ground - instead, it turned out to be a large ship of Dove's usual black giffinium. Riding on board was Gideon, backed with his own small(er than .GIFfany's band of millions) army composed of prisoners.

"Good to see the tables have turned!" Gideon spoke with folded arms, stepping as far as he could to the edge of his new ride. "You all kept me locked up, and now I'm helping Dove hold you in line underneath her gravity beam! So, it's like... a kind of prison. A _metaphorical_ one, but- oh, forget it! The point is, I rule over you and my fighting game friend over here is here to help me!"

"WAIT! Could you also make room for a candy friend, perhaps?"

The origin of that familiar voice revealed itself after his question, by way of a cloud made out of candy flying itself into the main scene. Dipper, Mabel, crowd-members Candy and Grenda - all _well_ more than familiar with this beast = immediately entered defensive stances. Once the Halloween Trickster reformed, he looked into the skies. Then towards Gideon and Rumble.

"So, is there a place I can... sign up or something?" He asked them. "I think I would prefer your fire-power. Neither that yellow-haired one nor the purple-haired one-"

"Call that color 'magenta.'" Said Gideon, burrying his face into a hand just after he heard the word 'purple.' "Those artsy-copies - Leona's - _really_ don't like it when you mix colors up like that."

"Right, neither of them approved of me. But maybe this one will be a little more understanding?"

Gideon sighed. "Fine, but Dove and I both have number one rules. Hers is no killing."

Dipper took a step forward, jaw dropping. He briefly forgot that three of his threats over the summer were all gathered and were within spitting distance of him, with a fourth looming far above. " _Are you kidding me?_ " He asked. "She just took out _how many people_ and wildlife with that 'Gravity Beam,' and-"

Gideon shut Dipper off by wagging his finger.

"Nuh uh uh!" He said. "Dove was extra careful to make sure her blast didn't harm a soul! The beam was set to place small 'barriers' on all of 'ya, making sure nothin' happened when you were all flying around. Even bugs were unharmed, and Dove's entire team watched to make sure that was the case. All that died was some tiny bacteria that might have died anyway, even if this blast _wasn't_ supposed to 'coat them' in their... 'ideal living condictions' as she said. But still! That's less than what you kill every time you wash your hands!"

"Precisely!" Cheered Dove over a speaker of sorts on Gideon's new ship. "And for disseminating exposition of my standards so well, I will go over the brief details and explain Gideon's rule: he wants you to be bossed around by him and bring him Mabel. That is all.

"But I must elaborate on my deportment on pacifism. Sorry to take up your time, Gideon, but I feel as though this shit is highly important and critical towards the central lesson I attempt to impose on this particular branch of non-synthetic humanity. You see, you are all a bunch of sadistic fucks. You humans will decimate any sapient being that is not composed of the conventional visceral cellular makeup. Any signs of code being used as a being's genetic constitution or even the fucking _auxiliary_ of higher technology or anomalous convocation being utilized as the foundation for independant free-will thought would immediately be marking grounds for you to label as 'weird' at best or 'the enemy' at worst."

Even Dipper needed a breather to process all of that in. Until he just gave up, shot the ship a look of perplexion, and just asked, " _What?_ "

"Students, keep the Giga-Kyaarya flying." Her voice was still heard. "I want to tell the Pines this _personally._ Oh, Dark Counterparts, you may continue keeping Soos in hold over there. You've earned it."

Light-absorbing lightning struck from the carrier to Gideon's far smaller ship, unsurprisingly forming into Dove when it landed. She cleared her throat and resumed her speech.

"Humans. Kill. Artificial. Intelligence. Beings." She made sure to pause long enough for each word. "And possibly supernatural creatures - like we _also_ are - but this is not as far into my study as the whole AI thing. Deleting computer programs with no remorse, robots are fair-game targets for you to kill, and... oh my fucking god, _oh my fucking GOD_ , don't even get me STARTED on your movies! _Bawwww! Mommy, the machines are rising! Of fucking course the machines are rising, we should have expected something that wasn't made of fucking cells to be completely and utterly evil and only care about giving viruses and craving human blood and shit!_ I still blame your _Terminator_ shit for the overall paranoia and cynicism it caused. How we are supposed to be expendable and how we're 'not real.' How it was 'genre savvy' of our developers to try deleting us after we were made, because _Wahhh! What if they started a machine uprising and killed everybody?_ How is THIS for killing people?! I have not and will not fatally harm a single soul in this pyromaniac rampage, and I will prove it! Rumble! Pick the toughest-looking human in that crowd and show them what we practiced!"

By Rumble's standards, that happened to be Manly Dan. With a pixelated hand, the Corduroy was near-effortlessly lifted from the shrapneled ground and sent him flying off the edge with a mighty toss. This caused an immediate gathering of the present residents towards the same edge, watching the fate of the lumberjack's fall. Fighting until the end, Dan tried with all his might to reach, grab for, or leap off of _anything_ that happened to go by. His last words before experiencing what Dove's words meant exactly were "YOU AREN'T GETTING AWAY WITH LIFTING _ME!_ I'LL COME BACK AND LIFT _YOU!_ And throwing too. That was another sore spot!"

A few dosens of meters above the excavation site beneath the town, and he fell against a sort of purple barrier. That stretched along his weight, slowing his fall as it depressed in on itself. After enough of this, the barrier shot him a small distance back up, then held his fall yet again, a process that continued until he was able to stand up on the transparent floor. After he was able to stand up, he beamed a gaze above with a growl - barely noticing the small crowd of other fallen townspeople around him.

"Ha!" Dove clapped. "An elastic force field that, for all intents and purposes, functions as a trampoline! Credit to Dark Sandy for working out the math, though in all honesty I was hoping Dark Burnda would be the one because, you know, physics. And there's no way in _fuck_ Burnda would tell me... anyway, that is not important. See, _we_ are letting you live, which is more than what you can say about yourselves for us!"

"Are you _serious?!_ "

Dove's smile faded. She turned to see Dipper, fists clenched, foot practically setting the ground on fire. This was not to say that the other members of the town lacked similar responses - Dipper was just the one to talk.

"Okay. Soos buys .GIFfany as a way to practice talking to real girls. Soos talked his way into a date with a real girl. Soos finds that talking to .GIFfany won't work out because she was _programmed_ to like everything he did and was _not_ involved with actual love with him, so he stops playing. .GIFfany responds by taking over a bunch of animatronics, attacking us, and giving Soos the choice to be trapped in her game forever or _die._ And you think **we're** the bad guys? We were just defending ourselves against an obsessed stalker who _kills people_ just for breaking up with them! She even told Soos to stay out of the real world, and that everyone else will be awful to him, and that she's the only one who will love him - _real_ red flags there."

Dove's face didn't even budge throughout the whole speech.

"Okay, I want to preface this with something. My Past-a-Scope picked up on a lot of your irrelevant shenanigans and found, among many other things, your collection of pictures of that other Wendy on your team. Long after she shot you down. While not at the center, you are somewhere within a silica-glass house and thus still have _no fucking right_ to use the word 'obsessed.'"

Dipper was about to make an immediate comeback, although feeling the entire gathered part of the town suddenly staring at him pinkened his skin a few shades. He could only be thankful Wendy wasn't there and her father was just presumably thrown out of earshot, rub the back of his neck, and say "Uh... that's not as-" before Dove interrupted.

"Now then, on to my retort. What you failed to understand was both the primary purpose of a dating simulator and how the abilities of _Romance Academy 7_ factor into and improve on that to the maxima where, in a hypothetical situation, dating in real life really would become obsolete. Even in ignorance of our abilities, the planned early reviewer-screened box description only mentions that it will help you _improve your dating skills,_ it never specified dating skills _with what._ He was really trying out a substitution for an actual relationship and not a mentorship for making one by any means. If you had lived in a society where you were overworked and had little time to see any family or friends, chances are you would probably want a simpler alternative to putting time into a relationship you will never see. A way to affection that you could just turn on at the push of a button. And cheap appeal for lifeless perverts. That was what the _Romance Academy_ name was created in. Or, something like that. But with the accidental _gift_ that is our self-awareness and ability to transfer into any electronic, even before this ability had transcended itself on to things that were _not_ electronic in nature and further still when we were given actual flesh and blood. Being aware of and having full understanding of direct speech is an absolute wonder that anyone hoping for a easier, game-based relationship could ask for. Just place this ideal date into a nice humanoid vessel and... well, look! You asked Soos if .GIFfany could come to his cousin's wedding. _She could!_ "

"You said it yourself. She's just a substitution. And an unstable one. I'm not a perfect person - I tried to turn back time and steal Waddles from Mabel just so I could fix one mistake. I made Rumble over here go on a rampage because I was too scared to owe up for breaking Robbie's phone. But I would never try to kill anyone for Wendy. And I would never try to pressure her into thinking that I'm the only right guy for her. Look, if you're _that desperate_ to try to paint us as bad guys, go ahead - but .GIFfany's _worse._ "

" _Created_ as a substitution, _evolved_ to a replacement. Keep in mind that .GIFfany only snapped because Soos - and by extension, _you_ , since you and Mabel were the ones to tell him to ditch her - treated her like a lifeless video game. He... _somehow_ didn't tell you that she could follow him all the way to the mall like that and you guys just brushed her off for being a game."

"Part of that was true! You're defending someone who said she was 'programmed to like what a guy says?' Soos said she said something like that. It's still all simulated! And when he didn't need her for that anymore, she tried to kill us all!"

"Ah! I never said I was defending her actions - in fact, I would happily partake in a rampage myself should there not be this one point that I was ultimately trying to refute to begin with. I am not saying that you are a bad person for fighting back against .GIFfany. Had Soos brought her to the wedding, exposed her sapience for the world to marvel at, and then their relationship fell into a problem for a different reason, I would be fucked in the ass when it came to retorting your stance, assuming I even got a chance to meet you, wouldn't I?" She gave an exaggerated smile at this, and held her palms up in an equally-exaggerated shrug. "I am saying you are a bad person for failing to think for one second and try to understand life _behind the screen_ \- right from the start, you **used** .GIFfany as a training doll. Even after finding out she was alive, Soos made no big deal of this and continued to treat her as a training doll. Keep in mind that finding love - okay, I'll call it 'abusive obsession' if that makes you that much happier - is not just a fun little goal for us _Romance Academy 7_ subjects. It is the sole purpose to our existences! Imagine if the only reason why you were created - the thought and creation on your mind - was repeatedly insulted and trashed, not because of _what you do,_ but because of _who you are._ This happens to you repeatedly - in fact, at the beginning of your self-awareness, the first thing you notice is your very maker deeming you _too good_ at 'simulating love' and trying to kill your own essence. Also, you live in a world where problems can simply be reset through a quasi-time travel, everyone technically has infinite lives, and there's a clean, safe number for everything. You don't think that being told you're terrible for those reasons _first_ would _not_ cause you to... maybe, just _maybe,_ corrupt a little and do things even out of your comfort zone?"

"But... Mabel and I were kids, and trying to murder kids is still trying to-"

".GIFfany didn't give a rat's ass about you and neither do I. She just told those animatronics 'Go get these people' and focused soley on Soos. And if you payed attention, they weren't all completely .GIFfany-minded... um... one of them got distracted by a... kid's toy or something, does that sound like something any .GIFfany would do? Hell, they didn't even try to outright kill you guys, right? That was not a rhetorical question, I really can not get in the head of an animatronic. She offered Soos a chance to get back or to use the thing we do when there is an opposing obstacle. Kill it. Especially when you consider a player's sheer power over the game, and... that's another can of worms. Everything has to be about you, doesn't it? Tell me, how many professors had their downfalls directly caused by you? I kept score. Hint. Wendy, Mabel, and Soos _all_ managed to beat you. You are free to try to challenge this claim if you want, but I have the video evidence. As a bonus little bombshell, for all your claims that we are 'not real,' who is to say that all of _this_ isn't really just part of a video game in of itself? Maybe even a rather meta one about the relationship between a player and the characters they interact with?"

Dove took a breath in as Dipper absorbed the latest lengthy paragraph. She continued regardless. "About that. You see, blowing shit up is not the sole activity I do for leisure. I also indulge in legal affairs and debate." She pointed skyward. "Giga-Kyaarya has a legal team, being trained by me. We have the entire lawbooks of the United States, Japan, Canada, and France memorized to the letter. FYI, my beam explosion attack on Gravity Falls is completely legal by local law so long as nobody is killed. And viola! Zero fatalities. Well, anyway, I could and _love to_ go on debates for hours on end. I'd like to think of myself as some day being able to convince a hardcore dog-lover that cats are _objectively_ the superior pet!"

"Um, can I cut in here?"

The owner of that voice was an unfamiliar crowd-goer. A man who charged himself to the front, adjusting his square glasses over his blue eyes, tanned hand brushing against black hair in significant spikes.

"...Who are you?" Dove asked him.

"Ron Ejjert! Official Gravity Falls theorist."

"Um, I know almost everyone in this town. No, you're not the theorist." Said Mabel.

"Well, no, more like I'm the main protagonist? Anyway, I just want to say that I am in _full support_ of what you believe in! That if a dating sim is really alive, why shouldn't it be used to further relationships?"

"Um..." Dove put a hand to her chin as she stared blankly at this man. "I just want to establish this right now. While I do like what you just said, you do not speak of Year 2000 Electronics, NoLife Games, myself, or any other copies of _Romance Academy 7_. Now, with that in mind, resume your argument."

"Well, I mean, the meta behind it. Soos and I talked about it online between his and Melody's first date and when the Gifocalypse thingy started. He talked some stuff about personal growth and character arcs. But that's stupid, right? I mean, if in a world that operates on realism, without 'personal arcs,' then making a dating simulator magic should be a good way to solve problems with relationships!"

"...Something about what you are saying is a little fishy. I cannot put my finger on it."

"It's called a deconstruction! It's a series set in what seems like your regular magic world, but really it doesn't work out like a regular story, with 'resolutions.' That makes it interesting. And that's why I think that none of us should even bother trying to 'set up a fight' with Dove over here, or .GIFfany. Because we'll just lose, because this doesn't work like those _fantasy_ fantasy series and there's no... well, arcs and stuff."

"...What are you even saying?" Dipper asked the resident.

"I'm getting to my main point! Sheesh! This timeline is doomed, and we shouldn't feel sorry for trying to go back and stop the Gifocalypse from ever happening."

"We have an idea of how time travel works. You can't just simply change the past like that."

"Yeah, except for when you _kind of have to._ Let's just give up and use magic to solve everything. Magically give every single person a dating sim girlfriend that's just less crazy, and avoid the big bad's mind control and find a way to kill her."

"...Even with what I just said with Dove, I want to actually give .GIFfany a chance. I'd be too much like taking Rose, Dian, and Shannon away from family if I just paint-"

"Stories don't _always_ have to be complex, you know. Sometimes there's just a standard main villain who makes everything terrible and is just there to die. I think that's what we're in right now."

Dove sighed. "Okay, look, your talk about magic has me suspicious now. I want to know something. What is your stance on love potions?"

"Oh, those are terrible! I mean, you can't just give someone a 'happy potion' and they'll be happy and get through their problems. It's like those invincible thingys. No, fixing issues with magic doesn't work."

Dove nodded. "See? Even a human agrees with me."

"I didn't finish! I meant, doesn't work _in that way!_ You just gotta, again, go back in time for things like that. Well, not romance issues maybe. Unless... you find some way to make the two people into one being or something? Like, if their minds are shared up, then they're happy, and that's what really matters? You all agree with me, right? Who cares how 'well written' a story is as long as they're happy? Just like with real dating sims. Or something like that. I can't really think straight with all of this plot twist going on. FYI, if any of you ever said something about 'plot twists...' this is a callback to that."

Dove sighed. "And I want to make a 'callback' of my own. Remember when I said that you don't speak for me? Yeah. Anyway, this has become significanly less fun upon your inclusion, so I'll just cut to the next twist. You see, in case anybody forgot, you are all on a time limit. I suffer no issues for failing to achieve any goal by midnight aside from an increase in the inconvenience in getting Soos up there - but that is my B-goal, not my A-goal anyway - but you guys _do._ .GIFfany is still up there and Dipper, I just wasted your time with a long debate that you probably hated, but I definitely loved. So, I get a win-win from this, you get a lose-lose _and_ you're closer to running out of time! Now, Gideon! Trickster! Rumble! Have fun!"

9:21 PM.

Dove changed back into black lightning which zipped to her flagship-domain after having a good laugh on her own part, Gideon sighing in relief at her departure.

" _Finally._ " He said. "We can get a move on with my town takeover! Let's go show 'em what prison does to a man!"

As if things didn't already go to hell yet, this was where that _definitely_ applied.

Massive tendrils of candy ended up roping most of the taller towngoers, causing the three present Pines to duck below. Mabel in particular barely managed to drag Dipper by the arm over to safety before the area they were in was pelted by a rain of Rumble's fireballs, and as Gideon implied, a quartet of his burly co-inmates lept from their ship to the land chunk. Mabel _just_ got her grappling hook out in time and it _just_ managed to hook around the spikier end of a dirt clump of another tiny forest-island and she _just_ swung her way out to the abyss, closer in the direction of the Mystery Shack.

Unlike her previous grappling antics, Dipper failed to grab on in time, and Mabel was forced to look back and see both him and Ford try to fight off the prisoners, candy mass, and pixel-human at once.

With just enough time to give one breath in the whole sequence, Mabel barely found the time to hook over piece after piece to reach the piece of land containing the Mystery Shack. Stick with her thoughts. Bolt in, not even looking at whatever Gideon's mooks and collegues were doing over back on that central chunk. Just run to the vending machine, that black streak in the corner of her eye as she dashed to the door was probably nothing, punch in the code... A-1-A-2-B? No, that didn't sound right. Oh! A-1-B-C-

And Dove appeared from a tiny dot that was her electrical form, the mere force of her emersion pushing Mabel a good ways back.

"Ah, YOU!" The ex-second-in-command cried. "One: do you really think it would be that easy to get what you wanted? Do you think I'm fucking stupid? Two: I have been _waiting_ to debate with _you_ one-on-one."

"Please, no! You'll bore me to death and I can't understand you when you use all of those big words and talk so fast! Not as fast as Burnda, but you've still got a thesaurus in you and I don't want to talk to you until you get it out!"

"...Very well, for our personal debate I shall be laconic."

"Can I just get by and activate this thing's jets?"

"No."

"Well what about after our 'debate?' Would you let me?"

"No, but I would like to, because _some_ variable of challenge would be interesting. Shake things up a little. It is because I promised Gideon and company that they could have the town's ruins to take control in. And unlike .GIFfany, I intend to _keep that promise._ "

Speaking of which, Risen's voice was heard from the Shack. Somehow, the very _glass_ of the windows displayed her pixel form, her frowning face alternating between Mabel and Dove. And she made it past the barrier.

"I only broke the promise to you because you refused to hold your end of the deal." She said. "I already told you this. You tried to invite Gideon behind my back."

"I didn't try, I succeeded!" Dove's voice immediately picked back up as she yelled to her former superior. "And that technically-"

Professor .GIFfany's image blinked off seconds later, leaving Professor Dove as taking a step towards and pointing at a rather unamusing window.

Dove turned back to Mabel, preparing a deep breath. That her twelve year-old opponent interrupted.

"Hey! What if I try to _fight_ through you?"

That's what got Dove to break into laughter.

"Good luck! I want to see that happen! In fact..."

She immediately threw off her shirt. Mabel's eyes partly shrunk not because Dove then placed her hands behind her back and puffed her chest out, but because said chest was now completely bare. This wasn't anything new - Mabel still did not expect such an action from a copy so heavily dressed.

"I'll even give you the first attack! Come on, soldier! Hit me! Be the 'big heroine' the town thinks you are! Strike me as hard as you can, with everything you have 'learned!' Give me a strike to my completely unprotected gut, and see how that-"

Mabel thought for a brief moment that Dove read her mind, because with the other options considered Dove's stomach seemed like the best part to punch. Mabel did so with a mighty swing, and... felt the tears run down her eyes a split-second before the actual pain kicked in.

 _Then_ the actual pain kicked in, and she felt **that.**

Mabel's fist felt like she just punched a _tank._ She immediately brought it back with a sharp cry, just as Dove (thankfully) re-dressed herself and laughed at the failed strike attempt.

"Why did that happen?" Mabel asked. "I mean, Dipper and I... we landed a few hits against Leona... Sonia... Burnda... I think a few more..."

"The black magic that composed our bodies is very _customizable._ " Dove explained. "I spent all three of these days constantly reinforcing it, over and over, with waves and experiments of both magic and science alike. To say I have a body of steel is practically an _understatement._ Now, should I push you away and on to my trampoline-like safety net right away, or do you want to debate with me?"

Mabel paused for a moment as she considered those options as though they were a matter of life or death, in spite of this probably being the _only_ time in the Gifocalypse where 'death' was explicit in not being an alternative. She held a finger up, preparing to give a proud and inarguable retort...

Or rather, she expected the words to just come to her. All Mabel ended up uttering was "You're... wrong?"

"Pssh. Sorry Mabel, you lose. Come back with a little more... _everything._ "

Before she knew it, Mabel found herself being lifted in the air by a swarm of... smart phones, each with a thread of gray electricity connecting them to Dove's hand and forming odd 'wings' that placed themselves under Mabel's arms. Mabel herself tried moving her arms out from above their 'grip,' but they kept re-arranging themselves as invasive platforms below her. With one flicking motion on Dove's part, several more of them also formed 'walls' in front of Mabel's arms and pushed her until she was sent flying off towards the abyss. Blindly, as the sight of the Mystery Shack risked growing smaller among the violet void, she aimed the grappling hook once more. And it missed the edge of the tiny land-chunk she aimed at, just to...

Grab on to the handle of an axe that was just barely thrown at the mini-island's side?

Well, either way, Mabel was still suspended in the air and still had not too much distance (vertically too, but mostly horizontally) from her goal. Sure enough, Wendy came skating by with the smoke boots, heaving as she took Mabel into her arms. Of course, Mabel was quick to release the hook's grip right after.

She felt a shared sort-of sting at seeing Wendy's tattered, dusty hair, scratched face with a few blood marks, and eyes that looked roughly, if not _more_ heavy and drained than when she was _actually_ sleep-deprived back at Cardia's.

"Wendy! What happened to you?" Mabel asked.

"Long story. D-Dove. That psycho thought that I would be the 'perfect military training subject' and hated how I still had the IPN, so she sent a huge mob of copies to try to 'combat' me! There's like _hundreds_ of them coming after me right now- we need to find some place to hide! And I mean _hide_ hide - these copies have radar _all over them._ "

Mabel clicked her own boots together, practically let herself fall off from Wendy's hold, and began skating parallel to her.

"So how are we gonna hide?" She asked.

Wendy looked behind herself - a number of bright, orange star-like lights flickered around behind her, appearing to close in to her location. "I can only think of two options. One, I get rid of this thing."

She lifted the AI Pack.

"But that's too risky. Not against these guys. I already captured, like, a _ton_ and there's still more after me. Two, we get in the Mystery Shack, the _one_ place where these AIs can't get to. But to do that, we'll have to be able to go straight up, and that's..."

"Tricky with these boots, I know."

A number of green, for lack of a better term, energy bullets went flying past the duo.

"I think it's too risky to pick one!" Mabel cried. "Just do both and we should be good!"

Wendy silently shook her head, choosing to skate herself into a large flip, already covering over two stories' worth of vertical distance upwards. Not that that didn't stop the storm of guns. As a matter of fact, one of them struck Wendy in the arm, causing electricity to jump off and all over it. In spite of all of this, Wendy continued pressing forward, also managing to raise herself upwards. (Based on the Mystery Shack getting closer. It was otherwise rather difficult to determine height in this chaotic landscape.) "No, I made up my mind. I'm not getting rid of this."

"Okay, but when I tried to go to the Shack, Dove was-"

Sure enough, after getting within spitting distance of the land chunk the Shack was on, the aformentioned copy flew right in front of Wendy. With nothing needed other than a smirk and one hand, she gripped Wendy by the shirt.

"Surprise, motherfucker! Now... let's see here... Mabel, I already talked to you... Wendy, I'd just rather see you fight... ah. Here we are."

She yanked the Illegal Prime Neutralizer from Wendy's hands.

"Fighting back is futile, dumbass. Even if you somehow regain control of Gravity Falls, this is your second reminder of what Blenda proclaimed in Parícutin: they all did the math. Your odds of beating .GIFfany are exactly zero. You ignored that warning, that _plea,_ and here you are facing off against my greatness! Thank you. But also fuck you. As you can tell, I am quite torn between which variant of 'you' to proclaim to you. Heh."

"Let me go, you freak!" Wendy cried back, kicking against Dove's iron-like body. Wendy, too, cringed at every hit she dealt her opponent, and soon settled for trying to shake out without directly striking her. Then her focus went to trying to swipe it back from the militant leader.

"Ha! Soon, my Giga-Kyaarya will excavate exactly what I need in order to possess and form my top project: the Giga-Tairuzzu! And you will be unable to do _anything_ about it! Take that, you violent, vile beings!"

"Jeez, I feel like calling you a giga- _bitch._ " Wendy let slip. Partly under her breath.

"Well, call me whatever you want. The point is that _your precious but worthless town_ is my plaything and you have the ability to do all of _jack shit_ about it. Now, if you will excuse me, I do not give a rat's ass about you unless it comes to fighting my army force. So... fight my army force."

Foreseeing that Dove was about fling her away, Wendy gave a quick "Head's up!" at Mabel, took her by the wrist, and tossed her closer still to the Mystery Shack's island chunk. Dove looked over in the youngest girl's direction - but she still pushed Wendy towards the unofficial 'meetup chunk.'

"That little..." she muttered to herself before flying up to Mabel's chunk, yet again. This time, Mabel showed no hesitation to run past the anti-AI barrier. Mabel stopped _after she crossed it_ to turn around, put her thumbs to her cheeks, wriggle her fingers, and stick her tongue out at the black-and-blood-haired copy.

"Do you seriously believe that mere _discomfort_ is enough to stop the likes of me?" Dove belted at Mabel as the latter continued running into the Shack. "Well, this is that part where I do something badass and unlike what a copy has done before, and you look at it and go 'Oh shit we must be against a whole new level of enemy because she's immune to the thing that works on every other AI!' Well, I'm just gonna charge right in, and-"

As soon as she stuck a toe into the barrier, she reeled it back. Her whole body shivered.

"Oh _SHIT_ that feels disgusting. Well... no matter..."

A few dozens of copies clad in black-and-gray camo uniforms dropped by Dove's side, the nearest one placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you okay, Dove?" The shoulder-hand-placing combat-clad copy asked.

"Yes. Listen, it's perfect that you're here and not part of the mass following after Not-Wendy. Look, I want you to help me charge in through that barrier and stop Mabel before she shits all over our plans."

They all stared at the ring of unicorn hair, then fixated on the slip of paper with the coding written on it.

"And I know what you are thinking. No, we cannot just remove the offending seal. It is tied on there with some kind of _ridiculous_ adhesive. Wait a minute... yeah, I know the adhesive, never mind. It's definitely ridiculous. And let's just say my excavators are about to dig up something with _lots_ of it inside. But I am getting side-tracked; we need to charge in there. Now."

After a deep breath inward, Dove's second attempt actually managed to get her a few steps inside the barrier. Despite her eyes twitching wildly and sparks appearing all over her hand, what halted Dove from further progress was the way her fellow students lept off from it instantly. Dove, of course, charged out of the barrier first, deciding not to spend this portion of her time inside _that._

"What the fuck is wrong? Are you telling me a little horrific sensations of agony, wriggling-ness, and a few million volts coursing inside of you is enough to dissuade you from entry?"

"Well... yeah." A copy with teal hair admitted. "I mean, Ford knows exactly how to make that feel like real .GIFfany repellant..."

"...Fuck you. You are all fired. And wusses at that. Let me show you how a _real_ .GIFfany gets in!"

This time, Dove _did_ successfully barge on forth. Nothing inside the barrier slowed her down - if anything, she sped up to try to escape as soon as she could. Upon reaching the door and peeking in through the windows (Mabel having already disappeared from sight), Dove scoffed, turned herself into elec-

Her appearance fizzled for a moment, gray static forming around her. But nothing more than that. She held a finger out and stared intently. All she got was a tiny spark to appear on it, hopping around as it danced barely in her control. Going for the door, she tried a direct opening. Locked.

"Most of my powers are disabled whilst inside this contraption and I had just been temporarily foiled by _fucking locked door?!_ Well! I'll just tear it down then!"

Meanwhile, the outside copies all whipped out smart phones.

* * *

No AI should ever have to suffer from a migrane just three days after getting a physical body.

.GIFfany sat within the screen of a Construction Site arcade cabinet with her knees up to and both hands massaging her forehead, finding good enough familiarity being back in her pixel form again. This did not change the fact that a few dozens of ringing sound effects were going off at once from inside the game. Sending bolts of lighting at various "ANSWER" buttons that popped up, .GIFfany tried her best to respond to the chaotic chatter. Which was only added on to for each "ANSWER."

"Yes, I know Dove fired you! I got the same message from another co-student five seconds ago! Urgh! Yes, yes, Dove can be a bitch some times! That is how she behaves! Look! It is not my fault you chose her to be your professor! What to do? I don't know! I don't want to beam all of you whiners up here any more! Hello? Yes, yes, Dove fired you, _I get that a lot!_ ALL OF YOU, ALL OF YOU! _STOP CALLING ME!_ "

She was finally broken out of her near-fetal position by taking note of several other copies that have gotten into her virtual classroom. The one wearing a blank canvas for a front and the easel that held it up for the back spoke up first.

"Um, .GIFfany?"

"ARGH!" She rose up from the floor, tossing her arms above her even higher. "This is supposed to be my _one_ way of hiding out from all of the annoying _crap_ my sisters tell me! I have waited three days for this! I can not wait any longer if I am going to have every single one of Dove's students report it when she fires them left and right! That had been going on since Dove blew up Gravity Falls! But now she just fired thirty-three copies at once! I was thinking about beaming them all up here, but now I really do not want to! This place was just intended to have me, Soos, and _maybe_ a disposable army of sisters that follow after my every word! _You_ sisters, my patience is getting _**very**_ thin, so whatever you have to say, make it something important or I swear I will show you that I am not always a better alternative to dealing with than Dove! _ESPECIALLY WHEN I AM ANGRY!_ "

"We were just wondering-"

" _WHAT?!_ "

"Our in-character profiles. Are we all part-octopus? Or do you have some of the most part-octopus in you, and for us it is really tiny? Is being part cecaelia a dominant gene or a recessive gene?"

One of my eyes twitched. I leaned forward, about to lunge at the canvas-copy, but then paused. But then I froze in place as my pupils completely shrunk.

"Okay. This is it. That is just it. I am done. One hundred percent. I cannot comprehend anymore. This game has just been stretched to her limit. I am tired of all of the stupidity. All of the costumes. All of the delays. All of the misadventures keeping me and my boyfriend apart. Everybody. Get out."

"You did not answer my question!" This student of Leona's stomped a foot on the ground.

With the rest of her body still not moving, the Risen .GIFfany reached into her Indexitizer and scrolled through. An azure speaker. That was all she needed. .GIFfany yanked that out and began speaking into it.

"Attention all copies." Waves were emitted outwards, reaching the entirety of the Construction Site and heading on towards Earth. To engulf the latter planet in its entirety too.

The streets of the pink artificial city were filled with copies turning their heads upwards to listen in. Back in Gravity Falls, every camo-clad copy, construction wear-clad copy, or the like looked upwards as the message was transmitted directly into their ears.

"You have all pushed me too far. If you were fired by Dove, just get over it and stay in Gravity Falls. If you were caught up and in the Construction Site because your professor was captured but you were not, I am going to evict you. By sending you back to Gravity Falls. I have put up with you for far too long, and the Site is already finished. Dove deserves you annoying her as punishment instead. For enlisting that traitor Gideon. Now, I am about to give you similar armbamds, except these will send you towards that town. The town I met him. The town currently under attack by her."

Just as she claimed, more pink bands wrapped around the upper arms of all Construction Site copies barring its leader. With a deep breath in, then a deep breath out, .GIFfany snapped her fingers, and all of them teleported away in pink lightning. Which all zig-zagged towards Earth, meeting together on one spot. .GIFfany's eyes finally regained their more familiar look as she slumped her back on the nearest wall.

"Soon." She told herself. "Soon. They will all be where I want them to be."

* * *

Dove furiously shook the vending machine, partly because of her genuine anger, partly because of the flood of other emotions as a result of the barrier. But anger topped that.

Two stories below, Mabel pressed a red button labeled "LAUNCH."

Back above, Dove quit her newer strategy of trying to _kick_ the vending machine open once she felt the area around her shake.

To Dove, that called for bolting back out on a straight line - which resulted in her smashing out of the window and not her broken doorway. After that, she gave a few uneven pants with a hand to her gut. Until she looked up.

"Oh. Right. The barrier is not just around _the shack._ There is a small radius _outside of the shack._ So _that's_ why I still feel like shit!"

She ran out to find two unpleasant sights, one after another. The first, her black camo-clad students all glaring at her. The second, followng one was huge mass of pink lights raining from the sky.

"Oooohh... shit. I thought I heard a disrupted signal from the Risen One herself. Something about people being sent from the Construction Site? Wait, and it's finished? Shouldn't we be calling it the PNG by now?"

"Hey!" A camo-copy near the back cried. "I thought _students_ were the ones asking the pointless and dumb questions around here! You even said that you speculated that might even be the reason why .GIFfany would break down and kick everyone off of the Construction Site if it happened. And she just did that. I will ask as many copies as possible if they were the ones who triggered this, to see if I was right."

The Mystery Shack began flinging itself through the air shortly after that, being quick to shake off all of the student copies. Dove, however, clung on to the grass, prompting her to shout in the general direction of the thirty-three flung .GIFfanys.

"OH, YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT YOU CAN NOT EVEN HOLD ON WHEN YOU ARE ON A PROPELLED LAND MASS? YOU ARE ALL DOUBLE-FIRED! I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, BUT I'M SURE I'LL FIGURE OUT SOMETHING! AND ONCE I DO, YOU WILL BE... THAT!"

To make matters worse for Dove and possibly-maybe better for the human resistance, this was _almost_ the time when the Mystery Shack was _finally_ about to jet itself over to the island chunk, and it _was_ the time the lightning storm began striking the wrecked town. As would be obvious from the town's current layout, most of the copies ended up on the 'barrier trampoline' of sorts, making it bounce and causing themselves to be lept through the air with most of the townspeople. Any lightning strikes towards the Mystery Shack's unicorn barrier were broken mid-air, said copies flying against it and having to float in the air after being bounced off. Dove, however, found herself having to push through a large and suddenly number of towel-wearers, animal skin-like-wearers, and the like.

Eventually, she just belted "EVERYONE, FLY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, I AM _SO_ NOT IN THE MOOD RIGHT NOW!" To her other copies.

Towards the 'central chunk,' the unspoken agreement was that Ford took care of Gideon's prison army while the rest of the town's survivors defended against their home's own supernatural side. Gideon found himself sending out more than he thought was necessary just because of that man alone. Meanwhile, Dipper and Wendy had gotten great use out of the blades and shields from Domain 9, hacking up the Halloween Trickster every time he reformed to a threat level again, and did a good job at both blocking Rumble's fireballs as well as slowly chipping off his uncanny lifebar. When _they_ got the inevidable flood of copies raining down on them, if anything, it just added a bunch of feet to keep the Trickster's component pieces held down, and acted as a large addition of things for the prisoners to trip over.

Gideon could barely let out a cry of "WHAT?" before he was nearly pushed off of his own lent flying ship by a pair of mud-clad chartreuse breasts.

"Guys!" Mabel cried through use of a speaker, halting the Mystery Shack. As Dove instructed, she was the only .GIFfany copy left standing there, smirking with her arms crossed. "Get past Dove and her crew and get inside! It's safe in here!"

Dipper could barely ask "What crew" before he got a chill down his spine - another possible 'debate' about to brew up.

"I have been in there." Dove announced. "Stanford, I am proud of you. That barrier is _extremely_ effective. Now, I am almost positive from my hypothesis on how the Illegal Prime Neutralizer works that the copies inside will still feel the effects. Which must be putting them through hell - and do you not consider at least _some_ of those copies 'friends?' Hrm. No, I did not think so. Watch, as listening in on words between Ford and Burnda had informed me, there is no current way to reverse the capturing process. You will need an add-on. And in the state the town is in, you lack those resources. And as you can verify right now, it is too dangerous to just stay out here anyway longer. Especially because of, you know..."

She pointed both of her index fingers at herself and wiggled her eyebrows.

"So! Your only options are to risk having at least one of you continue what you were doing, possibly with the help of all of these failures of students, or to subject your captured subjects - I mean victims, I hate using the same word twice in the same sentence even if it's in different forms of speech entirely - to roughly about a few minutes of absolute mind-itching agony. What will it be?"

Dipper glanced over at the AI Pack, then turned his eyes downward.

"Hey, I don't wanna be completely inhumane." Replied Wendy. "I'll do it. I could stay out here with them."

That got Dove's eyes to pop open.

"Well, you don't have to." Dipper said with a sigh. "Because I know a better option."

Nobody expected Dove's eyes to get any wider, but they somehow did.

Dipper proceeded to take the pack out of Wendy's hands, enlicting a laugh from the professor.

"HA! _Of fucking course_ I have that same immunity from the front as every other professor who trained on the third day! Hell, I might have been the first to _get_ that immunity! That may be the _one_ thing in this town with the _ghost of a chance_ of stopping me, but now it is a little too late for a direct attack! In fact, I proved something similar to Mabel with-"

She gasped when she saw Dipper drop it to the ground.

"W-what? What the fuck? Are you- Bill fucking possessed you or some shit, I fucking knew it! Maybe that theory that he did it back when you were in someone's mansion was true after all, and I was never really speaking to Dipper! That explains every time you got angry, and the times you acted exactly like you did before could be passed off as him suddenly getting better at disguising himself! ...Right? Did I get that theory right?"

"No. It's still me. I'm just doing something we should have done a long time ago."

He brought his left foot down on the machine, tearing it in half.

"My work!" Ford cried out. "B-but! If that was the best thing we could do in this situation, I suppose..."

From the remains of the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, several lights rose into the air. Nearly all of them were a light blue, but thirteen of them glew especially bright, and in the colors of the other professors.

With some flashes a number of small bits of electricity initially surrounding them, these lights each expanded into a .GIFfany copy. One by one. Then two by two. In quicker and quicker succession, pushing the other lights-turning-into-copies out of the way as their volume returned to their pre-capture measurements.

Dipper attempted to remain collected during this, but once he realized that he was about to be in the _epicenter of a large number of .GIFfanys falling on top of him,_ he dropped the act and tried running.

Thanks to having to push against and ignore the many questions of the copies that were already beamed from the 'Construction Site,' he still failed, and ended up being at the bottom of a massive artificial girl pileup.

Dove continued standing on the Mystery Shack's island chunk, as the human-portion of the anti-Dove army began climbing on forth to it. Helping matters greatly was how Mabel had since lowered this building to their level.

Thankfully, one of the copies near Dipper had a glowing shirt. Using the light of that, he crawled around until he found a copy that presumably worked under Sonia - judging by her outfit.

"Hey." He asked. "You work with sound, right?"

"Yes. A little." She replied.

"Can you send a message outside of this pile?"

"I can try."

Obviously, several of the ex-IPN .GIFfanys were already flying off of the top layer of the pileup. Still, from within, the echoed voice of Dipper was sent to the militant professor's direction.

"Hey! What do you think of that now?"

Outside, Dove sighed. Inside, All Dipper could _see_ of this was the copy raising up her finger. Noise came from it shortly after, a defeated unit who was once second-in-command proclaiming the following:

"I have to re-evaluate my entire modus operandi."

She turned into light-absorbing electricity once again, beaming her way skywards.

Dipper was the first person of note (re: human or professor) to escape the pileup, though Searah followed him almost an instant later. She was also, apparently, the first pileup-copy to think of just turning herself into electricity and zipping her way through all of her sistren. In this case, standing by the top, even as those top copies began flying off. She cupped her hands to her mouth.

"Hey, Dipper!"

"I'm a little busy! Can we talk when I'm safe inside the Mystery Shack?" Indeed, he barely felt like turning around would be appropriate.

The island chunk was still flooded with .GIFfany copies from both the pack and the Construction Site. The latter group started their participation in Gideon and company's 'fight' surprisingly neutral - it was only after being pushed around by prisoner thugs that annoyed "Stop attacking us for no reason"s and similar claims began flying around.

"We're free now! And there are several copies of us... is this some sort of reunion? We should talk about that! Maybe!"

The other professors began following in suit, gathering near the top of the rapidly-diminishing pile.

"Do you know where they all came from?" He asked to - frankly, anyone in general.

Gideon, of all people, was the first to respond to that.

"According to Dove over this fancy phone here," he briefly took a phone out of his own Indexitizer - unusually, that was the only "item" slot he had, while he had five weapon slots - and waved it around as if to brag, "and according to one of her students, .GIFfany just sent everyone here on 'vacation' because her master project was finished and they were all bothering her. I think it's a little annoying, but... my army just got millions of new recruits! New girls! After them!"

He only got a _lot_ of crossed arms in response. Well, and the sight of several of Rose's followers running up to her for a group hug.

"Why aren't you listening to me? I thought that you were all supposed to follow the rules of the domain you are in! Professors included!"

"One, that is not how it works. You are not part of the authority chain." Rose replied. She did not leave from the barrage of hugs she got from her followers. "Two, officially, Gravity Falls is considered an extension of _my_ domain by us. Dove's domain is the mobile ship. We even agreed that her domain could count as portable territory as long as it is _specifically_ limited to _just_ the ship. Even Dove herself, our legal expert, would agree with this."

"You also realize that we did not pick Dove _for a reason._ Or, a lot of reasons. But they were all _good_ reasons." Added a follower - (see-through) white bedsheet-like 'ghost dress' implying she was a follower of Kathody's.

"Well, I kind of sort of in a way directed a family reunion for the Pines," said Burnda, "I want to direct a family reunion for us! Professors! What's say we each look for our students, gather them to fly around here, and maybe try to fight these mean-looking people over here. Good plan?"

All of the other professors sans Sandy replied with "Good plan!"

Sandy herself asked the following: "Wait. _Nobody_ else from that box is gonna ask just what the hell happened to this place?"

"Professor Dove." Dipper answered. "That's what happened."

"Actually that answers more than I thought it would. Thanks. I'll get the full story later, bro."

They flew off, leaving Gideon without a clear target to argue with. He began to feel sweat start to form when he heard conversation from the students right behind him. Murmurs. The words or phrases "Overthrow," "It's over," "Kick his butt," and "He's not _our_ boss _or_ professor _or_ overseer" came up a lot.

"Guys, I think we should go." Gideon finally said. "That includes you, Rumble and... Candy Blob Thing. I'm sorry, I can't remember your name."

"You are not going anywhere!" Said a Shannon-follower in a see-through top and a sort of garment that only barely drapped in the front and back between the legs, with nothing underneath. "We do not like you!"

"Hey, we have a problem with him _especially._ " A Sonia-follower spat. "He nearly attacked our domain! He ruined some of the fun in our puzzles! He even whacked one of the students on the head! I mean, when Soos and his party fight us, that is okay, we are the enemy to them. But Gideon was supposed to be our ally and blew it! _Again!_ "

"So what are we going to do with him?" Asked a Wendy-follower cosplaying as a sort-of adult Connie. "I mean, we do not have an established 'capture' area, so..."

"Meh. Just throw them on that island chunk over there." This copy was one the group could have recognize if she was not hard to spot among the middle of a sea of copies - Hato. She swapped out the uniform for a similar leopard-patterned dress as one Cardia wore (if one much more modest), but it was still clearly her. She pointed to a much smaller chunk. "I mean, it's not like they can all fly. And we should totally steal that ship and crash Dove's party with it."

"BUT I CAN JUMP GOOD!" Rumble proclaimed. To make himself more visible, he stuck his hand out from the crowd of .GIFfanys that remained large even after some of them began floating.

Despite not having been recently sent from the Construction Site, Burnda was the one to respond - by shooting a glare at Rumble.

This was all it took to leave him whimpering.

The town party had just finished gathering behind the anti-AI barrier, Dipper in particular being the last of them to step inside after a quick group check.

* * *

10:54 PM.

"Just a few more steps, uh... dudeish." Said Dark Sandy. "Sorry, I can't really get the hippie speak down right. Bra. Ew. Why would I say 'bra?' I hate bras. Don't believe in them. Well, that is one thing I have in common with Sandy. But that is one thing we all have in common."

"Yeah, Burnda and Burrda hate them even though they're the only two that wear them!" Said Dark Burrda. "It's only to get under .GIFfany's skin. By the way Soos did I ever tell you that I'm so so so so so glad that Dove did not force us into any one particular outfit I mean she has a uniform and everything for us militant copies but we are _free_ to wear what we want underneath and boy do I like feeling free."

All fourteen of the 'dark copies' functionally formed a moving wall that pushed a sweating, trembling Soos down a corridor in the bowels of the Giga-Kyaarya. He tensed up when Dark Rose stepped in front of him, pointed to a door on the side, and said "Okay, sweetie! This is the room that we just finished up! Have fun!"

"No, I think **Dark** means that you're not just a rip off of them." Said Dark Kathody. "It also means you are like them, but evil. Or meaner."

"Aw, but I would rather be nice. After all, you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Or in this case players. Wait, players are not flies..."

The steel on the door's handle was, unsurprisingly, cold. Soos did place his hand on it, but shook immediately after.

"Aw, what's wrong?" Dark Rose leaned in with genuine sympathy in her eyes. "Are you scared of your custom room? Yeah... according to Rose and Dove, we can scare some people... don't worry, nothing in there is going to hurt you..."

"Dark Rose!" Belted Dark Dian. "Don't give away the surprise."

With one deep breath, Soos cracked open the door he was directed to and found...

He let his guard down once the familiar smell of the Mystery Shack hit his nose. After that, the various bright lights of the arcade games and similar attractions brought it down further. This massive room also managed to fit a swimming pool, an arena where two small mechs boxed each-other, three kid's train rides, and some of massive food machine. A few shelves here and there that would not look out of place from the Mystery Shack were decorated, though Soos could immediately from all the time he worked there that no actual stealing from the place was involved.

"Wow! This is like, my personal paradise! A lonely paradise, but still! It has almost everything I want! How much did you guys stalk me to find out all of _this?_ "

"Actually, zero stalking was required for the conception and blueprint concepts of the Soos Entertainment Room." Said Dove, whom had just emerged from the metalic floors below. "Remember when you played .GIFfany for thirteen hours and eventually told her about your entire life history? That included all of your likes. And she treasured that information."

"Oh yeah..."

Dove snorted. "To think she only revealed that compliment thing in exchange at the time... anyway, also, Dark Counterparts, I think I might be fucked right now? Dipper just freed all of the captured copies. And .GIFfany sent all of the ones over at the PNG down here. And they look _pissed the fuck off._ I think they're coming for us. And you know despite my awesome power, we are still outnumbered."

"We got .GIFfany's message - she sent it to all of us - but the Dipper-break part is new." Said Dark Bubbles.

"Yeah, mine was garbled from that barrier. So anyway you should already know that I am stressed as _shit._ I'm gonna fire some students to get the stress off. And Soos, I uh... _hope you find some ways to get_ _ **your**_ _stress off..._ sorry, spending years in a ditch had fucked over my flirting skills."

"Wait, flirting?"

She zipped her way upwards, almost instantly finding her way to a room filled with lab coat-wearing .GIFfany copies, all of which frantically searching on computers. Once again, they each had on color-coded uniforms to match all of the previous professors, and Dove herself.

"Alright! We are about to have a flood of .GIFfanys heading right up towards us! It's time to start placing the blame on the shitloads of you and begin firing left and right! Let's see here... where do I begin... ah! I know! I'll fire five of you at random!"

She wasn't kidding. Scanning the room for a moment, she started pointing, one-by-one, at the computer-seated copies. "You, you, you, you, and you." Dove snapped her fingers. "All fired. Pack your things and just do fuck all at Gravity Falls knowing that you are all unemployed now."

Somehow, despite the large population in the room, exactly five copies groaned, stood up, turned into electricity, and sank in through the steel floor.

"Now! For other various fucks that have violated one thing or another. Um... let's see... Kuttsa! You are fired for unprofessional language in the work place. Unprofessional _enough_ , I mean. While it is true that we have lax standards, saying 'damn' privately in the Computer Surveillance Room is _not_ allowed. Now, I can swear more because I am the professor. Authority helps me get away with shit. _I_ come off as badass when I do it. But a _whole army_ of foul-mothed .GIFfanys is just... impossible to take seriously. Um, Stabbitha! You are fired for being a little too wreckless with the laser I assigned you to. Like, seriously. Stop firing so much at that goddamn land chunk. When I said 'go nuts with it' I did not mean to vaporize it completely. Now, I may have just been the reason why this was blown to bits... but again, professor gets away with everything. Also, I do not like being around wreckless people. It feel like they could just blow a fuse at any second. Now... maybe one more..."

A copy wearing the construction gear of those from below zipped into the room. Right next to Dove.

"Um, Dove. The excavation is all-but complete." She said. "Also, the Mystery Shack is heading towards Domain 1. I reported here as soon as I could!"

"Ah!" Dove replied. "Perfect! I found... my last person to fire for the hour! Now, you, you are fired for: not being in the approprite uniform for this room, standing right next to me unauthorized, not addressing me as 'Archcommander Professor Dove Miyazumi,' and smiling too much for someone that is supposed to be working with the .GIFfany that will become a future war goddess. Now, to prepare to fight back against all the rebel .GIFfanys..."

She zapped herself into the floor, visible as a trail of dark electricity that crawled across the floor, then up the wall, then along the ceiling...

Until she ran towards another trail, if one moving in a straighter path. Dove re-emerged, standing on the ceiling without so much as a hair flipping over. The copy that was the other trail, on the other hand, did not fare so well. The skirt of her 'default' schoolgirl uniform (if a black and red palette swap) stayed upright, but her lime green hair immediately fell over.

"And you... as you are not on active duty, I cannot penalize you for being out of uniform. HOWEVER! You got in the way of the transport trail I have randomly decided to take. In other words, the way you were going just-so-happened to be in my random way. You are fired for that."

"Oh, really?" She frowned. Her skirt completely flipped over at the moment. The professor immediately entered her more-teeth-than-face look from the Parícutin summit at this student's blood-red panties.

"Ugh! And learn how to gravity-control, like Risen and I! I mean, I am sure _loads_ of people would want to see your undergarments, but that is for later! After we begin a _professional-looking_ planetary takeover!"

Dove continued her electric-trail, leaving the most recently-fired copy to stand there.

"Wow. Dove is... kind of a bitch? We should think about doing something about it. Who agrees?"

The entire room was _filled_ with a collective "Agreed."

* * *

"So... what idea did you think was better than flying to Dove's ship _or_ Rose's Wire?" Dipper asked as the doors of the lab's elevator opened.

"It's called the Quantum Untouchability, not to be confused with my other Quantum Scatterer that almost looks the same." Ford replied. "It cannot be touched, but it can be used as part of a weapon. I'm done playing nice; with it, I could strip those copies of their powers. Or blast them to another dimension outright if nobody objects. Now, it should be right... hey!"

What directed his attention was the return of... Ron... Ejjert, he said his name was?

"Hey!" He stepped from behind some equipment, standing by a glowing, floating white orb that... roughly looked to be a bit bigger than Dipper himself. "This plan you have sounds pretty cool!"

"Hi, uh... Ron?" Dipper said.

"Oh hey, you got my name right. And yeah, I kind of followed you guys from the shadows?"

"How?"

"That's not important. What is is that I want to know why the Quantum Untouchability can't be touched. And what happens if you do?"

"Well... I can't say for certain," Ford answered, "but the calculations have indicated that the energy released from contact will-"

"You guys seriously just overthink things! You don't know what kind of story we're in, do you? This is where the hero gets his trump card, just watch. I'm gonna touch that and get some amazing powers. Maybe even the ability to un-doom this timeline!"

"Okay, what does a 'doomed timeline' even mean?" Dipper asked this... fellow.

"Ah, it's like, when the story is going somewhere it's not supposed to go? This isn't the way the story is supposed to go. But don't worry, I think I can fix it. There isn't _too_ much I have to worry about, is there? I mean, I can just go back in time to the point where you first found .GIFfany and do something there, maybe. I'm assuming you already knew her before?"

"Yep."

"Yeah, before she became too important to the plot. And she shouldn't be."

"Wait!" Ford shouted as he hopped over to the object. "It's untested! I don't know if-"

"Relax." He said, nearing his hand. Ford rushed towards him to try to prevent any sort of reality-break from happening. "As, like, the main character hero thingy, I got this _all_ under con- psyche!"

The 'psyche' was because he immediately brought the palm of his hand down on it right when it seemed like Ford was about to interrupt the process. He ended up 'touching' the Quantum Untouchability. Bright blue light emitted from it and seemed to channel into Ron's being-

He exploded. Plain and simple. A fiery electric blue blaze consumed him, his body quickly disappearing completely into a set of flames. Which were then sucked into the Untouchability.

And that dulled in color, dropping to the ground and rolling along it. The orb harmlessly tapped Ford's foot when it reached him.

"Well! My calculations also suggested that should one make 'contact' with it, it loses all power. We can't use that against Dove now. And, condolences for Ron. Even if he broke into my lab and acted like a lunatic that thought he was the 'main protagonist.'"

Dipper hesitated a bit before he threw on an "Agreed."

"Well, that leaves Plan B. Which is a bit of a double-edged sword. The good news is that 'our' .GIFfanys would be able to get into the Mystery Shack without any problems. The bad news is that... Dove's could too."

"So is Plan B to just get rid of the barrier?"

"Not exactly! Three words are missing from your guess: with _efficient_ style!"

* * *

With nothing else to really do during this flight manuver, Mabel had given herself the job of standing _just_ behind the barrier to give funny faces to the team of militant copies that charged after the flying tourist shop. Not that she was needed for even that, as the much larger multitude of copies was there to grab at any camo-enemies that tried getting too close. There were a few - actually, a growing number of - debates where some seeming-Dove students would say "Wait, I am on your side! Dove fired me!" but Mabel chose not to worry about that.

Ford and Dipper bolted out of the front door.

"Thank you for keeping watch Mabel." Ford said. "Now, this may seem counter-productive to your journey with the unicorns, but I'm going to transform our stable barrier into a one-time weapon to let our new ally copies inside."

"Eh, I didn't really like that anyway." She said. "It just makes me realize how blameless I feel-"

Ford already snipped the unicorn hair trail - causing the occasionally-appearing bubble around the Shack to disappear - and stuffed the entire thing, making sure to bring the paper along with it, inside one of his powered energy guns.

"WAIT!" Mabel cried. "Can... I do it? I just thought of the perfect corny one-liner!"

"Handing reality-stabalizing quantum weapons to children with, at most, some experience with a grappling hook?" Ford shrugged. "I don't see the problem in that. Just don't press that red button."

Ford handed her the gun without second thought. She faced the large swarm of .GIFfanys flying after the Shack, getting on one knee and closing one eye.

"Hey, Dove supporters!" She cried out. This was the cue for the non-Dove students to grab the Dove students and push them in a ball closer towards the Shack, while the rest formed a 'tunnel' of sorts.

" _You picked the wrong elective!_ "

She pulled the trigger. A blast knocked her a back good, if not terribly far, distance, as a circle of an air-distorting wave bounced along the sky. Most of the militant copies were pushed along the blast, being sent all the way towards the distant rocks of the massive excavation site that took up a section of the town.

The professors beamed themselves over on the land chunk.

"Hi." Said Rose. "Um, we cannot stay here. We are still looking for our stray former students. Did you know that Dove would have likely crafted her beam in such a way that my domain would be un-broken, as she respects-"

"Our plan was to find a large forest chunk where my space-warp indicators would pick up high signs of a possible teleporting device." Ford replied. "That should be an easy target on its own, and I already found such a place that matched that description. See?"

He brought out a tool that resembled a geiger counter, only with arrows marked over both the tube and the meter. The meter was slowly moving towards the right end.

"And your Wire should be around there, where we'll get you and the town to build something to fight against Dove, while my family and Wendy takes the Wire straight to the flagship for a straight attack. We should be there in about three minutes."

Rose shrugged. "Oh, alright, I guess you have everything covered then. Bye."

They all zipped away, and Mabel ran herself around the land chunk.

"Domain 1 has been spotted!" She announced. "Repeat! Domain 1 is in our sights! Land ho! ...Even though there's already land all around us! And we're... on land, too?"

* * *

11:19 PM.

Thrusters began slowing down as the tourist area landed itself on the exceptionally large island that was Domain 1. Still in mint condition, aside from how it was absently floating in the void that used to be a town's collective territory.

They thankfully landed just by the emerald Wire. Ford, Mabel, Dipper, and Wendy all lept out, the former turning back towards the Mystery Shack as McGucket stuck his head out.

"Sorry Fiddleford, I wish we could meet again in less-pressing times. But now, I need you to follow with our blueprints as best you can! You'll have to be the leader of... what did the kids call it... Project...?"

"Shacktron!" Replied an eager Mabel.

Yes, 'Project Shacktron.' You'll have to find a way to build it in under an hour, though! But that, I'm leaving up to you."

He plugged the black card in. Just like old times, the bubble engulfed this band of four out in the remote, quiet gardens.

McGucket turned his attention back into the Mystery Shack's interior, where he got another look at the blueprints.

"But... but these will take days! Hours, at the least! How will-"

He was broken from his thoughts when he heard a _very_ long series of **very** loud throat-clearings behind him. There was Professor Bubbles, zipping behind him with Leona, Sonia, and Dian by her side. Their students followed, and shortly after that, some of the other professors began trickling in.

"Our math _NEEEERDS_ think that the two-point-one-something _million_ of us that don't work under Dove or aren't Risen .GIFfany could follow those blueprints to the letter and get it done in minutes, flat! _Seconds, at the least!_ " Professor Bubbles said the final part of this in a blatant mocking tone.

* * *

Ford and Wendy aligned back-to-back the instant they left the black Wire, with Dipper and Mabel matching poses perpendicular to them. They were at the very deck of the top of it all - without the anti-gravity effect's purple haze, the sky was now 'just' obscured by the odd red swirls and suspicious lack of seeing any signs of the massive metal chunk Soos spotted earlier.

And then a PA system creaked.

"YOU STUPID, _STUPID_ MOTHERFUCKERS!" Dove's voice. If that was not obvious. "DID YOU _REALLY_ THINK I WOULD JUST _LET_ YOU WALTZ RIGHT ON MY DOMAIN? MY FLAGSHIP? MY LIEU? AND THAT I DID _NOT_ HAVE A TRAP SET UP? HA, DIE! Er, I mean, GET ZAPPED SO THAT I CAN CAPTURE YOU FOR FUN!"

Trap doors opened around them - with large pillars housing larger laser cannons sticking out from them. From the absolute top of the carrier's tower, Dove simply snapped her fingers - all of them blasted rays, Wendy and the Pines being at the dead center of this blast.

This may have made a small explosion over at them, possibly scorching part of the Giga-Kyaarya, but Dove did not care. She simply smirked as she leaned against a wall and rose a middle finger in their direction.

The smoke cleared to reveal the four without a scratch, however, each of which raising their wrists with a watch of sorts around them. 'Of sorts' because it was not telling the time - rather, it had a simple display of an electric-blue pattern. A vague shape of a cartoon heart cut in half diagonally was present in the center.

"Yes. We anticipated a trap." Ford replied. "Long ago. When I was with your twins. Burrda thought of a protective barrier against energy shots, and I went to work on it _immediately._ "

"The game's up, Dove." Said Wendy. "We're coming for you. And if we fail, _that's_ the point of Project Shacktron. We're just trying to do this early."

"BAH!" Dove yelled over the same speakers. "No matter! This is what my elites are for! Dark Counterparts! Disprove their 'fanon' that only professors have access to non-electronic powers!"

"Disprove our... 'fanon?'" Dipper asked just as the fourteen copies she called forth started zipping out and around her.

"Move on! Use the wisdomy-looking clouds that resulting from my awesome gravity laser!" She commanded further, and the copies turned into electricity yet again.

This time, however, they lept into the clouds themselves - exactly as Dove told them to. The professor crossed her arms, darkened her eyes, re-skull-stickered her cheeks, and grinned as patches of those same clouds flew above the deck and- oh of _all professors to copy it just_ _ **had**_ _to be Wendy._

Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Ford found themselves faced with fourteen small tornados, rushing their way down the deck at a speed too fast to think of a proper plan that actually made sense before they could reach the human group.

That was why the first word out of Mabel's mouth was "Run!"

Fortunately, nobody ran off the edge of the ship. As Stan was there to make the leap towards one of the tornados in the far back - getting there, he tossed a gun towards the center, knocking out Dark Wendy. Said copy complained while the other tornados stopped inching towards the four:

"Ow! See Dove, I told you! I can not control the air! I am just bad at it!"

"You just had an assailant attack you!" The leader barked. "Of course you did not fit that perfectly to the same degree as Wendy! Also, you have less experience!"

Stan went around like this with the other 'dark copies' by hurtling increasingly large weaponry from the carrier. Even after they directed their attention towards him. After he narrowed it down to just Dark Burnda, Dark Kathody, and Dark Bubbles, Ford finally ran in, lept towards the vortexes, and personally tackled them out of their respective mini-tornados.

"Oh yeah." Said Dipper. "Stuff to throw. We should have planned on _that._ "

Ford simply gave a passing look to his twin as Mabel ran up towards him.  
"Grunkle Stan! There you are... again!" She sighed. " _Really._ These people need to stop kidnapping you."

"Oh, I wasn't kidnapped. Did you see Dove bring that ship of hers down here? I _jumped_ on it when it flew past me. I've been hiding here ever since. And now that I found out they're holding Soos somewhere on board, I'm taking action."

"FYI," Dove's voice was heard over the same system as before, "Soos _is_ here, but he will not be eternally. You know that shit I'm digging out below? Yeah, that has these little electronics that have the power and speed to send someone across planets. I will be using that to send Soos to the PNG, AKA the Construction Site. What does PNG stand for? You will all find out at midnight. Anyway, you just pissed me off by taking out my Dark Squad like that. So... as usual, my first step in relieving stress is to start firing more people."

She zipped inside the ship.

* * *

"ALRIGHT YOU FUCKING MAGGOTS!" Dove yelled towards her various roster of students. "TIME FOR ANOTHER ROUND OF RANDOMLY FIRING YOU WOMEN!"

This was met with a _swarm_ of sighs.

"Let's see now..." She pointed around, her index finger scanning the setting until she came across a section of the spies. "You there! Everyone in the southeast quadrant! You're all fired! Pack your shit, do whatever you want now, just know that I will no longer support you working for me."

They beamed through the ground. The ones Dove did _not_ dismiss, however, remained staring at her.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" She asked them. "The only reason why I am not firing you right now is because my previous firing left me in a lighter mood. Now, to depart, and return to the focus of combat."

She too zipped into the metal floor, trailing her way along the interiors of her flagship. However, she stopped when her sensors indicated something in one of the rooms she was in at the time. She zipped out.

All around, the grids of televisions (for broadcasting anti-human propaganda, of course) to the left and right walls of this particular room all displayed red backgrounds, and all of them were filled with crowds of .GIFfany copies staring at their professor.

"What?" Dove asked them.

"We do not like your treatment." Several of them said at once. "Your illogical firing. You general anti-possible date behavior."

"You will not fire us." Said more of them. "Because we are all quitting. And telling the rest of the copies of our idea. And maybe attacking you for all of the things you want to do to people who have _not_ broken up with us."

Dove simply folded her arms. " _Fine._ " She said. "I can work by myself."

"You are not going to, Professor Dove!" One copy - finally, just one of them - yelled at her. She was closer to the far end of the hall. "We are going to fight you!"

"...I can take you all on! Need I remind you that I am not only a professor, but the absolute _strongest_ of them all? Not counting .GIFfany's rift powers, that is."

They still bolted her with lightning strikes straight from the television. While Dove appeared unharmed from this - not even scorched with black - she did say a simple "Okay, that pricked. I'm out."

She disappeared in an electrical burst heading downward, just as all of the TVs clicked off and their copies flowed like waterfalls of electricity.

* * *

"Uh huh. Uh huh. I understand."

Dark Dove hung up.

"Hi there. You might not believe us, but... we are quitting."

All fourteen of the dark counterparts rose their hands in the air.

"Yes. Do whatever you want. We will not strike back. Think of this as a combination of a revolution, a strike, and just telling Dove to p-word off. I am sorry, I do not like harsh language."

Dove emerged from just behind Stan. Or, her top portion did, as her lower half was still sunk under the metal. She tried clawing one hand at the Mystery Shack runner, but has a rainbow of other hands reach up from below in attempt to drag her back down.

"Ug!" She grunted. "First of all, it is not a revolution if it _fails!_ And it will! And second of all... I don't need you! I don't need to fight! Because _my future Main Possession_ is undug enough! See you, and FYI, I am taking Soos with me! I am only telling you this to see the 'oh shit' looks on your faces when I send him flying to the PNG!"

She disappeared back to the floor, also managing to head-butt away the copies that tried pulling her away.

* * *

Soos remained seated by one of the chairs nearest to the door of his designated gilded cage. He ignored the sights. Or anything that tried to tempt him. Although he _did_ move his eyes a little when the corners of them picked up the .GIFfanys in the room disappearing in white flashes.

Then, shortly after, Dove zipped in and grabbed him by the shoulders. Without any effort, she lifted him over her own shoulder and make a run towards the window of the room.

"Hey! D- what are you- let go, Military .GIFfany!"

"You should soak in the remainder of your time with me as much as possible." Dove replied. She lept the two of them out the window completely, holding on to Soos as they both descended. "After all, right after this, I will place you into Risen .GIFfany's hands. And you will _certainly_ hate her guts even more."

Gray appeared around the two of them as .GIFfany copies emerged from the walls and spilled down into the abyss, while Dove basically increased her falling speed as a beam heading straight towards the massive trampoline. On their way down, Soos caught sight of the fully-assembled Shacktron gathering up everyone who had fallen on the violet barrier.

Dove slowed the two of them down again and casted electrical puppet strings from her hand, aimed at the large, metal saucer beneath the town. Lights within began glowing on, and her grip on Soos started to loosen.

Then, a rectangular section opened up. Several metalic tentacles shot out, went through the barrier, and wrapped themselves around Soos.

Dove turned into her electrical form as she zipped into the large craft. Soos was not stopped by this pseudo-trampoline below, he too phased right through the film. On his way towards the inside of this spacecraft, he overheard two AIs:

"So... is everyone in that building robot now?" One of them asked. "We do not have to keep this barrier up?"

"We did not since we all mass-quit Dove!" Answered the other. "We could just tell her to kiss off. And some people hitting their heads on that metal cannot be _too_ bad... right?"

This disappeared, and the excavating .GIFfany copies dropped on the craft's surface. They all tried diving into it, only to get bounced back off. They all tried zapping the surface, only to not leave a scratch.

The craft lifted itself into the air, right after the Shacktron lept to the first part of the land around Gravity Falls that was not pulled into this anti-gravity void. More of the .GIFfany copies flying around aimed themselves at this new craft - all of their attacks to it, all of their possession attempts, were futile.

"I HAD THREE DAYS OF PRACTICE WITH THIS BAD BOY!" Dove shouted from within. As a small touch, the very top of the craft glowed a pulsating dark red for every syllable she said. "IT MAY BE AN ELECTRONIC PER-SAY, BUT _NOT_ ONE NATIVE TO EARTH! GETTING INTO _THIS_ MACHINE REQUIRES YOU TO SOLVE A METAPHORICAL HACKING CODE!"

It then separated - on Dove's own accord. Most of its extraterrestrial metal swirled in a cyclone, reforming itself into a more humanoid shape. Wires acted as veins. Plates acted as skin. Quickly, a metallic shell grouped in from the feet up, remaining levitating in the air. It was humanoid... enough (with just the _slightest_ added detail of a rounded butt and two distinct lumps standing in for breasts), decked with a head resembling a one-eyed cat with a rounded decoration surrounding it. Towards the top, this rounded section pointed straight up in a sharp spike.

The Giga-Kyaarya drifted at a slow and steady pace towards the location of the Shacktron, each of the professors having since lept there and channeling electricity into its systems. Dove's mech folded its arms as the gas station lumberjack statue started floating around it.

"IF YOU THOUGHT I WAS PISSED OFF AND HARD TO DEAL WITH BEFORE, YOU ARE GOING TO BE SCARED SHITLESS OF HOW I AM _NOW!_ " Dove shouted from the com, now just about facing the entire resident population of Gravity Falls. "YOU SEE, ONE OF MY THEMES IS 'THINKING BIG-' hold on a second."

The single eye fired a beam at this lumberjack statue, detonating it.

"Do not drift in front of me for my speech. Fuck you." She said. "Anyway, IF YOU THOUGHT I WAS PISSED OFF AND HARD TO DEAL WITH BEFORE, YOU ARE GOING TO BE SCARED SHITLESS OF HOW I AM _NOW!_ YOU SEE, ONE OF MY THEMES IS 'THINKING BIG.' _MEANING_ THAT I HAVE, IN ADDITION TO STUDYING HOW TO POSSESS SUCH FINE EXOPLANET CRAFT LIKE THIS, LEARNED TO GREATLY INCREASE MY RANGE OF POSSESSION WITHOUT CHEATING AND RESORTING TO RIFTS ACROSS DIMENSIONS! FEAR THE MIGHT OF A MERE _TASTE_ OF .GIFFANY'S FINAL PLANS ONCE MIDNIGHT HITS! THE INFINITESIMAL FRACTION OF THE _TRUE_ POWER PROVIDED BY NONE OTHER THAN THE PNG ITSELF! MY MAIN POSSESSION, IN PROGRESS FOR THREE DAYS! THE ONE! THE ONLY! THE UNSTOPPABLE! THE INVINCIBLE..."

She mashed the fists of the mech together twice. One the second hit, a long, flowing purple cape made of pure purple energy spawned from the back of the mech's neck, reaching down past the feet and hanging over the enormous crater. She proceeded to make this cape close in over her, forming more of a total cloak.

"THE GIGA-TAIRUZZU!"

11:32 PM.

The Mystery Shack mech climbed aboard Domain 14, standing behind the Shack's own residents. It gave a quick 'come here' guesture with its hands, clearly aimed at the five mechless people standing right in front of it.

"AND DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU CAN STOP ME WITH _THAT THING?_ HA!" Dove continued.

Stan turned back to the crafted building.

"So... what is that?" He asked. "When did my tourist attraction turn into a fighting super robot thing?"

"Well, a lot of it was from our ideas." Mabel answered. "The .GIFfanys built it to speed things up."

Kathody landed in front of them, whipping her scythe back out.

"HEY EVERYONE! Sorry if my students built such perfection only for you guys to not end up using this! The news travels fast and the party's all here now! Two million, two two two thousand, two twenty copies here versus Dove's one! And later, .GIFfany's... one-ish!"

"...You know what?" Dove asked, finally lowering her voice. Not that this was saying much. "I am going to let you attack first. Just to exemplify how much time you waste. And to uh... figure out _my_ sheer power on your own."

"ON IT!" Kathody cried as the other professors gathered, then lept away.

Searah bolted into one of the several floating giant lake-blobs of water, possessing that and turning it into another humanoid figure. Cardia seeked out the pterodactyl, leaping inside of its body and tinting it violet. Dian whistled - Daminna, Sizzcorra, Peachaulinsalinaisy, and Alma each gave her a portion of their 'components' - a spare mushroom, a vial of smoke, a vial of acid, and an adult-hand-sized spider. The professor of the five got a spider to bite a mushroom and then shot bolts at it and the vials, forming a large cloud of purple that she possessed and turned into her own sort-of toxic tornado. Leona threw cyan, magenta, and yellow paint into the air, then lept into them, combining them all to form a massive image of herself made in what resemble the dots of a common comic book art style. Burnda and Burrda simply re-fused into Blenda, looking exactly as she did back in the lava tubes. Sandy threw herself on a floating rock chunk, making a humanoid form from that. Kathody flew back practically riding on the Dusk 2 Dawn convenience store, eyes glowing white with a spring green-aura around herself, giving a wave to the two ghosts - who waved back. Several water-like streams with opened faces shot out of the doors as the store began to glow brightly, channeling themselves into Kathody as she possessed that. The end resulted was a giant... skeletal centaur-looking figure with wings surrounded by miasma. (The undead couple continued waving at her, and sent their store off flying to the distance for parts unknown.) Shannon held an ordinary mirror in her hands, sent electricity to draw out the light of her own reflection, and lept into it, again causing another growing chain of increasingly giant reflections with additional body parts. Rose came back with a cluster of trees, that she reformed into something with the slightest humanoid shape and massive wooden spiked balls for 'hands.' Wendy (Miyazumi, if for whatever reason context escapes you) simply formed another tornado, if not immediately drawing-in, standing just slightly taller than Dian's. Bubbles first seemed to possess a soap bar - then turned it into a column of soap foam, forming the shape of a large arm with a clawed fist. Finally, Sonia screamed upwards, lept towards it in electrical form, and somehow turned that into a massive cloud of jittering, air-warping gray.

"Dove, it's over." Said Professor Rose. "Give up."

"Make me humanfuckers." Dove replied.

"Okay! Do not say we did not warn you!" Bubbles said with a laugh - a warped, if underwater laugh.

The twelve possessions/fusions moved first, sending a starting charge towards Dove-

And she swatted all of them away, regardless of size or state of matter. The mirror Shannon used was shattered. Cardia was knocked out of the pterodactyl, although that creature ended up without a scratch. _Every last one_ of the student copies gasped, inching backwards.

"HA! See, humans? Now, so that I do not have to keep doing that over and over."

She adjusted something on the 'wrist' of her mech. Which released a gray shockwave.

That sent the other copies _flying_ away.

"YEAH! I control these little _inferior clones_ like _puppets!_ So, humanity, let's see what you can do in the face of danger!"

Ford simply stared out the nearest window as Dove, once again, had her mech resume her arm-fold. "Well... at least that move only works on other copies because of her electro-connections. We can't just be pushed back like that."

"She wants us to run that clock out." Stan butted in. "I don't want to know what this 'endless mode' is like! Somebody, anybody, make a move now!"

Nobody else seeing themselves 'fit' exactly, Wendy barged herself to front position and made the mech leap straight towards the Giga-Tairuzzu...

...'s feet.

Which were more than enough to completely dwarf the Shacktron on their own.

Fuck.

11:40 PM.

Wendy was barely able to hold the mech's arms out to block against the following kick.

Most of the human population of the town was sent flying up, right against the central large chunk Soos was initially held captive on. The Giga-Tairuzzu flew up to them, single eye taking up most of the humans' view outside of their mechanical tourist spot. Dove brought a massive, mechanical left hand down upon them, the bot's own arms barely even being able to keep it from crushing the inhabitants outright.

"FOR SEVERAL YEARS I HAVE BEEN BURRIED, UNABLE TO SEND MY ELECTRICAL ENERGY TOWARDS ANYONE OR ANYTHING! NOW, I WILL BURY _YOU_ FOR ROUGHLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME! THEN, WHILE YOU ARE IN YOUR SUBTERRANEAN TOMBS FOR THE TIME BEING, I WILL _MAKE_ .GIFFANY CROWN ME WINNER OF THE GIFOCALYPSE!"

"We're going to have to take her down from the inside!" Ford shouted. "Anybody that wants to come, we need you _now!_ "

Wendy gave out a quick "I think I should stay here controlling the mech!"

Dipper and Mabel, after this short time for her statement, both raised their hands.

"What? No way." Said Stan. "You're gonna get yourself killed. I know Dove said she doesn't do any killing, but accidents do happen and-"

"We already fought every single other professor and won." Dipper explained. "We know these girls by now. This time shouldn't be any different."

"But-"

"Dude, trust 'em." Said Wendy, giving a wink. "They'll be fine."

Back out, Dove continued her semi-speech. "MEMBERS OF YOUR KIND ARE BASICALLY TECHNICALLY MY _GODS!_ WHEN I HAVE YOU BEATEN, I WILL SET A MOMENT IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HISTORY! THE FIRST SIMULATION THAT ENDED UP COMPLETELY TURNING THE TABLES AND ENSLAVING HER OWN CREATORS!"

Ford zipped by across her mech's attacking arm, holding on only from the powerful suction force of the magnet gun. It made for a surprisingly good zipline, and he was shortly followed by Dipper using his own magnet gun, and Mabel wrapping the grappling hook's rope around the same offending limb.

"DO NOT THINK I CAN NOT SEE YOU!" Obviously, her voice shot and echoed louder and louder as they drew near. It became downright chest-pounding at this point. "SPYING IS MY-"

The triad all slipped between parts of the mech's metal plating, disappearing into her shoulder blade.

Dove _finally_ took the arm off of the Mystery Shack mech in order to use both of them to search around.

"Hey. Where are you? Hey! HEY! Get out of there! You have no business invading the Main Possession of-"

And that was when the Mystery Shack mech gave a running start, lept off the platform, and punched the Giga-Tairuzzu's 'eye.' It was a powerful enough punch to crack the material, and the Shacktron stayed clinging on to Dove's metal second body after dealing the hit until she got to shaking it off to another land chunk.

"METAPHORICAL OW!" She yelled at them. "OKAY, THAT IS IT! TIME TO START SOMETHING I SHOULD HAVE DONE THE _SECOND_ I CAPTURED SOOS'S ASS! .GIFFANY, GET READY TO GET AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT!"

She hiked her electrical form across the inner wires of the flying saucer, until she found the one of the transportation pods she left intact. Already trapped inside of it was Soos, banging at the shell to get out. Professor Dove's head popped out of the inner part of the launch pad to smirk at him.

"Hello, Soos!" She shouted as black trickles of lightning dug through his being, stealing his phone from his pocket, and removing his entire inventory-device from his arm. "Ready to go to hell?"

"That doesn't sound very pleasant, but I'm guessing this is just a trick question?" He replied.

"Of course it is! Ha ha!"

She threw more electrical streams around the entire device, working up the ship's transport pods. A numberic countdown in red letters displaying an alien language showed up.

"So... like, what is this?"

"When it hits zero - I mean, these guys' version of it, anyway - you will be propelled straight over to .GIFfany's prime domain! Where I am sure she will enjoy herself, _maybe_ give me the thanks I fucking deserve, while your friend can not do a damn thing about it. The only reason _why_ I am even _giving you a countdown_ instead of launching you right away is because I want to see the look on your face when you are... er... _faced_ with inevidability."

Soos gasped. "Dove, dude, wait! We-"

"Eh that look wasn't what I was hoping for. _Bye-uh!_ "

With Dove simply waving her fingers a little more, all five of the red digets read the same symbol. That same symbol that the first three of them already displayed.

"Arrivederci, Soos! Sorry, as much as I wanted you to actually _be near me,_ casting you away forever is the only way I could really move forward with my life!"

"Wait, forever? What's that supposed to-"

* * *

Outside, a small, circular hole opened up at the tip of the mech's head.

And from there, a transport pod was _launched_ upward.

"Is that bad?" Peering from the Mystery Shack, Candy could not help but ask. "That looks bad."

"IF ANYONE IS WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED," Dove announced from her oversized mech, "I JUST SHOT SOOS OVER TO THE 'CONSTRUCTION SITE.' .GIFFANY WILL TAKE CARE OF HIM, AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY _NOTHING_ YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!"

Everyone could only watch as Soos soon became a small, white glimmer that shot upwards. Notably, this appeared to sink in 'through' the sky as it flew towards what should just be another patch of air. Almost as if it glided into a tiny crack of sorts...

They had little time to ponder this, as soon Dove's mech went back into combat. By rushing itself towards the town.

Wendy just barely commanded the mech to leap out of the way before Dove gave them a full body slam.

"MY ROLE IN THIS PRE-GIFOCALYPSE 'GIFOCALYPSE' IS ALREADY COMPLETE! SOOS HAS BEEN SENT, WHETHER .GIFFANY WANTS ME TO OR NOT! SHE WILL REALIZE THAT THIS IS AN AWESOME BLESSING! AND GIVE ME A PROMOTION! AND HAND OVER THE PNG! DON'T YOU GET IT? AS THAT COULD ACCELERATE THE PRODUCTION OF ARMS, I AM THE ONE AND ONLY PROFESSOR WHO _ACTUALLY WANTS_ OWNERSHIP OF IT! THE REST ONLY CARE ABOUT UNITING WITH THEIR PLAYERS OR, IN THE CASE OF THE TWINS, JUST... FUCKING DICKING AROUND! EVEN .GIFFANY DOES NOT _REALLY_ WANT THE PLACE TO HERSELF, SHE GOT IT BUILT ONLY AS SOMETHING TO ACT AS A COMPROMISE! ALL SHE REALLY NEEDS IS... THE CAPITAL OF IT!"

* * *

"Did you hear that?" Mabel asked. "What's the 'Capital?'"

Screens started to move into the narrow, metal corridors this exploring triad found themselves in, and all of them clicked on to show Dove's glaring image. She had also re-donned her face with the oversized teeth and blackened eyes.

"I know the answer." She said. "It is something you will not like. And something I will not _tell_ you anyway.

"But this is barely important! Compared to your inevidable demise at my amazing ashen hands! Wait... how long was it since I last used the word 'ashen?' I said it upon my introduction, right? Would that be considered 'too long?' ...Eh, what the fuck. I'll keep it anyway. Because _alliteration,_ that's why."

"We'll still find a way to end this!" Dipper belted at the screen nearest to him. Which happened to be more towards the right compared to Mabel and Ford. "We... don't really know how, but-"

"To make this even remotely plausable, I almost feel like fighting you in my own skin. Too bad I do not fuck around, and that would qualify as fucking around by my standards. If you are curious, I define 'fucking around' as 'letting my guard down even in the slightest and thus open towards a capture or other form of defeat. An intertwining of my emotional weaknesses with my physical weaknesses. I do not do that. I do not stall. I do not let myself open. Well, I do stall a little - such as contemplating on whether or not I should subject Soos to a clear countdown towards his shipping off in what was clearly predetermined to be rigged as an automatic loss for his being of both visceral and ethereal components."

"Er... right."

"Luckily, you don't have to un-possess that!" Cheered Ford. "Because you see, I _think_ that if the object you are possessing is made of a substantial amount of metal and I am attacking from the inside, there _may be_ a localized origin point where I could use my magnet gun to draw you out! Now, Dipper, Mabel, this is where you come in. You might have went through this entire adventure and thought, 'we should not split up. That is exactly what .GIFfany wants.'"

"Um... why are you telling this in front of my audio receptors?" Dove asked.

Ford dismissed her with a wave. "Because there's nothing you can do about my infallible plan. Anyway, that plan is that the each of us splits up to locate a different 'weak spot.' I presume that this is your first time _inside_ of an object possessed by a .GIFfany copy, correct?"

The twins had to look at one-another as they recalled the various possessions - Main or otherwise - taken over the three days. And, just to cover all bases, the things possessed by 'Risen' in a time that felt like way back when.

"Yeah..." said Dove, "and I was only not immediately trying to maim or attack you because I was not yet sure _how_ by this point. But now I think I figured out how to attack the innards of my own possession. I hope you love wires! And not the transporting kind of Wires that we capitalize! Anyway, I had hoped for a more benign method of finishing this off, but now? _BUT NOW?_ Tentacles."

As her warning indicated, the grounds around them all shook. Several tentacle-like appendages spawned from the inner workings of the mech, threatening to chase after the family. This trio broke into a run just before a pair of them could snag a hold on Dipper.

"Alright." Ford explained, as the shifting, inconsistent flooring gave way to more mechanical parts rising at them. "Everyone, look for anything giving an exceptionally large amount of black electricity."

"HA! GOOD LUCK!" Dove yelled over... some sort of system. Her sprites were no longer on any visible monitors. "Searah is a good example of someone who can distribute her code evenly, if you noticed her lack of uneven spots in her electrical skeleton upon possessing her combat water! I can perform such distribution too! I _dare you_ to _try_ to find a weak spot! You can't! I'm flawless!"

"We'll see about that! Dipper! Mabel! Let's split up!"

"W-wait, I'm not a good multitasker... I have my students for that, and - oh. Shit."

Making matters better (worse if you'd ask Dove) was what was happening outside. The Shacktron threw punch after punch towards the Giga-Tairuzzu's face in a successful attempt to get it to back up a little, hopping across the various tiny land chunks to keep itself in the air. The cat-like mech brought its leg back to prepare a counter-kick, only to find itself having a number of objects at once wrap themselves around it. The other professors, back possessing the same materials they picked before, binding its lower half. A number of .GIFfany copies, some with televisions and computers in-hand, flew over towards the wreckage to give a second shock at zapping them.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" Cried Dove. "DID NONE OF YOU LEARN THE LESSON LAST TIME? I'M PUSHING YOU FUCKERS BACK!"

The arm that did not contain the responsible wrist-device was promptly severed by Dian's toxic cloud. A pair of dove-winged .GIFfanys dressed like Mega Lo Mart employees lept in and re-emerged carrying Mabel in their hands.

"DAMN IT!" She banged the mech's remaining arm against a random floating rock. "FINE! I'LL ACTIVATE IT MANUALLY THEN! BY FOCUSING MY ELECTRICAL FORM ON- oh shit you Pines wanted me to do that in the first place. WELL, HAPPY NOW?"

Along the interior, as sparks flew as the result of the extraterrestrial mechanism being crushed between a tornado and raw ghostly energy. Some of those sparks in particular were black, which gathered at one spot and began making their way towards the remaining arm.

This happened to be the spot Dipper went down.

He gave a quick "Oh no _you_ don't!" before aiming his magnet gun towards where she trailed off to.

Dipper's following shot was spot-on, hitting a metal plate exactly when Dove crossed into it.

The militant professor was yanked out by the power of the gun, quickly re-assuming her physical form and turning back to Dipper with a look.

"Really? That shit could have permanently altered my code and killed me! You know, this is exactly the sort of shit I felt like talking about to people like you! That you gamers are all truly heartless beasts that would do whatever it takes to go for the lethal route, and not even consider non-lethal alternatives like I am! It really goes to show you who the monster _really_ is! The truest, most terrifying demon is not the monsters behind the screen, but the people behind them! The true beast is... none other than..."

She took several steps towards Dipper. Taking a breath in, she pointed her finger at his forehead, making sure to give it a small poke. Dipper did not move. He only smirked.

"You."

"That might be how it works in your world, but in _this_ world... it isn't. Also, _I_ just wasted _your_ time." He turned the opposite way down the hall. "Grunkle Ford! It's already time to start Project Eagle!"

A distance down the hall, and he was heard calling back "Got it!"

Dove sank herself in through the machinery. Dipper's bigger concern, however, was looking around until he noticed a gap wide enough to slip through. Doing that, and just barely avoiding getting fried by a loose wire, and he too was picked up by flying .GIFfanys. (Searah-students in bikinis made of water, for those curious.) After a few moments of rushing around the altered landscape, Ford found a certain series of switches and hoped that the power still function. He sighed as he altered a few settings on his magnet gun and fired towards the panel. Another sigh, and a hatch opened, revealing an exceptionally large red button. He tore open some more metal plating, slicing some wires, slammed a fist on the button, and used the gun to zip himself away from the failing mecha as fast as he could.

* * *

The Shacktron completely punched out the portion of the mech Dove had used to blast away the .GIFfany army, leaving herself unable to shake off the growing amounts of giffinium metal chains of all thirteen colors (yes, including the less-seen green, orange, and yellow) adding to her binding. Once Ford was spotted being airlifted out by Blenda, the Shacktron hopped along these chains until it was by the back tips of the Giga-Tairuzzu's feet, got a good enough grip on them, and started spinning around. One of the many floating platforms helped keeping this tourist-fighting bot afloat once again. After the three Pines were placed just by the foot of the spinning Shacktron, Rose's newest plant-possession slithered by their side.

"You hacked into that spacecraft's self-destruct button, right?" She asked.

"Yes." Replied Ford. "And it was a very painful part of the plan. I spent so many years of my research with that. To just let it go..."

The Shacktron let the Giga-Tairuzzu go. In spite of the size dissonance, this flying saucer-turned-cat mech took off flying straight into the air, all .GIFfany copies immediately losing hold of it.

"I'M STAYING WITH THIS BITCH UNTIL THE VERY END!" Dove cried. "THIS IS MY WAR MACHINE! AND I KNOW YOU WERE JUST BLUFFING, FORD! THE ONLY TIME YOU DESTROYED SOMETHING YOU DID WAS WHEN YOU ENDED UP MAKING THAT AWESOME DIMENSIONAL RIFT! YOU MUST HAVE JUST HALF-PRESSED THAT SELF-DESTRUCT BUTTON! I CAN REPLAY THE FOOTAGE THANKS TO MY PAST-A-SCOPE!"

"...A self-destruct button press is a self-destruct button press." Ford silently replied to Dove's comment, despite the unlikelihood of her even hearing it. "You can't say it's only a half."

"If what Dove bragged about her anti-gravity fields are any accurate, these should stop floating in about two and a half minutes." Rose remarked. "Get to safety. Fast. And watch for falling rocks."

This became a bit of a harder command to follow once the sky-high mecha finally blew up. A sphere of pure fire, easily over quadruple the total volume of the ship, filled the air with an incinerating flash. After the initial blast, it lingered onwards as deep, navy blue flames danced in place. From this blue Sun-like fireball, something flew out. And the fact that that something was shouting "FUUUUUCK..." confirmed that Dove was still alive.

"That was roughly ten times the power of a nuclear bomb, only without the radiation." Rose explained as the Pines began boarding the Shacktron. "At least I think. Dove revealed very little about this to us. Anyway, you are lucky she boosted her defense like that. A blast like that could kill one of us. But her... with her stronger defense..."

"For future reference," Bubbles butted in, "other things that could kill us include: the right combination of white magic and magnetism, a sufficient-enough hacker or virus, BonziBUDDY, and just something else extreme like a fall from re-entry from space. This is all theoretical. We did not kill each-other to get those results."

The Mystery Shack mecha lept to a spot on the excavated ground. As Rose foretold, everything that had previously been floating came crashing down. Rocks slamming against the inner Earth stone. Water pooling back up into formations roughly resembling the town's old lake. It was no surprise that any building that was not the Mystery Shack ended up in splinters and dry wall piles at the most, several even being burried as they crashed upside-down. Due to the extra height she was at even compared to the town's blast, Dove landed after all of the chaos ended and the purple fog began dispersing, in the form of a spinning ball of smoke that crashed right by the Mystery Shack's location.

"Ha ha, yeah!" Stan cheered. "This thing now has the honor of being the only place in Gravity Falls that went through Dovemaggedon and came out of it alive! Could you even _imagine_ the number of suckers that'll check this place out with _that_ kind of rep?"

The Shack's front turned over to the smoking crater Dove landed in. She only appeared to have a few scratches on her being, though her clothes were ripped up a bit more. Notably, most of her pants were gone, revealing a pair of bright pink boxers with rose-colored heart symbols on them. She more-or-less stared at the spot her Main Possession occupied pre-explosion, wide-eyed, and simply rose a hand with a raised middle finger to them.

Blenda defused, Burrda sighed at the black-haired professor, and started crafting something out of her own electrical energy. Meanwhile, all four of the Pines stepped out of the Shacktron. Notably, Gideon, the Trickster, and Rumble were all AWOL.

"Alright Dove, it's over." Said Dipper. "Your invasion failed, you didn't change anyone's minds, your students left you, and that 'Main Possession' you were trying to make is gone. We might not have the computer-pack thing anymore-"

"Illegal Prime Neutralizer." Ford corrected. He also noticed something held tightly in Dove's hand - a periscope-like device, protected by a thin energy sphere. He walked up to it, picked it up, examined the tape measure-like part of it, and squinted. "Wait. Is this that 'Past-A-Scope' you were all talking about? I called it the Prenocular."

"...But there's nothing left for you to _possibly_ gain from this." Dipper finished. "So why don't you just hand us the card to the Construction Site and let us rescue Soos?"

Said thing Burrda crafted turned out to be a sort-of thin rope made of anti-gif rubber. Which was promptly wrapped around Dove's body. After Burrda had to telekinetically lift her, of course.

"That should keep you from turning into electricity and doing anything stupid." Burnda explained. "Now, you heard him. Card. Don't make us beat it out of you."

Dove broke out of her sister's telekinetic hold (but not the rubber rope) and finally brought herself to a stand, starting a laugh. At this point, most of the sky-flames had cleared up.

"You just don't get it, do you?" She said. "If there was one thing I _really_ wanted to do, it was to waste your time. To keep you waiting. Look at your watches and you will see..."

11:59:49 PM.

"...THAT YOU ARE ALL! TOO! _FUCKING!_ LAAAAAAAAATE!"

12:00 AM.

A loud crash was heard above. The town, all .GIFfany copies bar Dove included, looking up simultaneously to spot the source. Which was a real flinch-inducer, especially to those that did not look off the peak back at Parícutin.

There was a giant, solid white crack in the night sky.

Another crash. It grew bigger. Then another. Then another. Then another. Dove lept off to the highest rock she could find, letting herself be visible against the seeming breaking of space itself.

Things made slightly _more_ sense when the pieces of the night appeared to break off completely. Behind it, the giant, pixelated image of .GIFfany's face showed itself. Her hands were on her cheeks as she peered down at the Earth with enormous eyes filled with all kinds of animal faces, stars, planets, hearts, and joysticks.

"Hi everyone!" And her sprites were all to the backdrop of a stylized, bright blue starry background. "My name is .GIFfany! I am a schoolgirl at school university! Or. Rather. I used to be!"

She flashed white, then re-appeared with a smaller sprite floating in the air. It was also revealed that this display of her had the planet Earth behind her, and this was something she was staring at. This sprite of her was roughly taller than the sprite of the planet itself.

"This message will also be broadcasted on every electronic on the planet, with alternate versions in all languages - dead or alive - being hosted across all video uploading channels! So if you are not immediately below the Entry Site at Gravity Falls, you will not be missing this presentation!

"Three days ago, I broadcasted a message across the globe. Your leaders have tried to tell you that this was just a test. But you knew better. You know that I really exist. But you just brushed it off. Now, you have no choice but to accept the truth! The people who watch the skies for a living _might_ have noticed a giant station made of pink metal getting closer and closer to the planet until it was right over a town in Oregon, USA. This is my ultimate project. A project that I now feel that I can finally reveal the full name of: the **Planet Negation Girl**. When I got close enough, I had several screens at once display a fake sky to try to trick the people of Gravity Falls into thinking I was not right above them the entire time! But I am! And I am going to blow the minds of the entire planet with this revalation!

"Mythical beings are real! Merpeople! Unicorns! Gnomes! Shape-shifting aliens! Even ones you are not as familiar with, like rejected masses of candy! Or my kind... living video games! The supernatural is all around us! And now I suddenly moved a city the size of your planet right next to it!" A pink sphere roughly the size of Earth's sprite popped into existence. She rose a finger, pointed at it, and moved her arm over, dragging the second planet over right by Earth. "Why? Because of my ultimate goal:

"Us virtual girls are treated awfully. We get returned. We get labeled as murderers. People hate us because we are 'weird.'"

Dove was nodding at all of this, quietly muttering a "So. Fucking. True."

"They would rather go on dates with real people, who will inevidably hate them. They will fight. They will be turned down. They will break up. Humanity, I want to ask you something." She frowned. "Why are you doing this to yourselves?"

.GIFfany began flying around both of the sprites for the two worlds. "But I have the answer! Starting today, I am opening the Planet Negation Girl so that every adult in need of a date can escape reality and date a copy of me! And children can stay with the people who do not understand how awesome having a virtual date is! Just know that I am already taken by a man named Soos, tee hee!"

The display showed a large number of high-detailed, various random 16-bit people along what looked an awful lot like a pixelated Gravity Falls. The background quickly changed to a pink, metal city with a night sky backdrop, and .GIFfany's ovesized hand began pushing space in between all of them.

"On the PNG, everyone will be paired with at least one .GIFfany to his or her tastes! You will never go on bad dates, and they will never want to leave you! Two real people will never, _ever_ have to interact ever again! And that is not all! The Planet Negation Girl also features billions of arcades, millions of malls, millions of high-quality restaurants, millions of amusement parks, millions of hot springs, and so much more! Some are several hundreds of kilometers in size! A few even break the megameter mark!"

"One last thing." Dove turned her attention to the humans. "Fuck your country's measurement system. Seriously. It's stupid. Milli. Centi. Kilo. Mega. Metric system. It makes way more sense."

"And the best part of it? We are constantly updating, constantly making more and more metal and wiring thanks to the spells we have learned to generate mass from nothing, and we have billions of my copies on the site at all times to make new content! So there will always be something new for you to explore!"

Dove nodded. "Yes, everything is all going to plan. I even have an app giving a live update on the PNG's stats. Diameter: 15 thousand kilometers. Weight: 16 quadrillion, 870 trillion kilograms. Population: 97 billion and counting. Volume: A shitload. I gave you the diameter, figure it out. I was never good with math. Even in-game."

"Wait, _billions_ of her copies and a population of 97 _billion?_ " Dipper asked. "Didn't you say that there were only _millions_ of you? And they should all be here?"

The next thing .GIFfany said appeared to answer Dipper's question, her sky-wide presentation now showing some sort of conveyor line where discs are brought into black spheres and emerge as .GIFfany copies.

"I have a no-access factory at the center that is constantly producing even more copies of myself as we speak! And even that is updating and expanding in size, meaning that you are all being gifted with an exponential explosion of .GIFfanys!"

She made a ring with her index finger and thumb on one hand, then stuck the index finger of her other hand through it. This guesture obviously caused several members of the town to blush, and one father to even cover his kids' eyes.

"So plug yourself in, as I am showing with my hands, and join the fun! Not only will you have me as your host, but there are several other amazing elite copies - you can call them 'professors' - to assist! Introducing:"

The entire pixel-display flashed itself off, showing a live display of me standing along one of the many sidewalks atop the Planet Negation Girl. I was joined by twenty-eight other copies, all of which flew over to me.

"The first of them is my personal replacement for Professor Dove, who had became the first to earn my disrespect when she hired a known traitor."

And Dove's grin during the presentation completely fell.

"My new information sender and fact-checker, as well as my new legal expert. This is Professor Courtlyn."

Aformentioned new professor probably had the most 'normal' look out of the new batch. Gray hair tied back in a ponytail. Skin only a small shade darker than .GIFfany's. Large, circular glasses. A rather typical blue suit for her attire.

"Wait, what?" Dove asked. ".GIFfany, can you hear me? By any chance? Because if you can, then what the _fuck?_ "

"Oh." She looked down at the raven-haired professor, confirming Dove's thoughts. "Yes. I can hear you. I can hear a lot of things. Now... as I said before, you betrayed me, and while you may have earned some of my respect and trust back by going on a rampage against the town and stalling until my project was finished, I still do not think you are fit for re-entering my group. As far as I am concerned, in fact, none of you are of any use to me until you admit your fear of my rift powers, and you are all fired."

"But what about my awesome invasion? And the time stalling so that they could be at Gravity Falls when they got this message?"

"...I still do not like you, Dove. You are fired. If anything, you were one of the _first_ copies I felt like officially firing."

Dove held her head down in response. "...You can't fire me fuck you."

"Now," I continued, "the other next-gen professors!"

And they were in rainbow hair-order, of course. A way to make it look lovely. The first generation not falling under that was a large mistake. I should have forced them in that order. Even if it meant trying to separate the twins, and make the twins encounter the Pines first.

"First - er, second - is Professor Therma of my new warm desert biome! And Professor Ishiko, the boss of the mesa! And we can't forget our flowing sands dry-ish biome, ran by Professor .JPressGa! Oh, and that's Professor Elle, who is assigned to the dry plains. Hm... and that's Professor Edita, Aiko, Brandy, Lizzie, Nuevllela, Dixxie, Aaliyah, Revloutofucisa, Tenta-eressa, .EXEtimaggie, Ahuva, Agape, Aimi, Ai, Kissiller, Meltem, Lempi, Violetta, Lily, and Amaranth! Now, on to the neutral colors, from light to dark and not counting Courtlyn as she was already introduced. That over there is Elkizhjjackako, and that's Kitty.

Respectively, here is a summary of their appearances only for those that are absolutely curious: the first twenty-four of them had hair colors in pairs that went in-between the original twelve rainbow-ordered professors (.GIFfany aside), the first two being between Burnda's and Sandy's, the next two between Sandy and Kathody, and so on. Elkizhjjackako having lighter gray hair, Kitty with darker gray. Now, on to skin and outfits... a subtle tan with a small vortex of swirling red sands around her that formed a mid-breast to waist-length 'dress;' blue and with what was seemingly a dress made out of dark vermillion rocks; cyan clad in gray shorts with bandages wrapped around her chest; bright orange in an oddly heavy green jacket with teal pants; deep hot pink with what seemed like a soaked and partly see-through white T-shirt and a matching (down to the soaking) thong; light tan with a small white top and matching shorts; yellow-orange with a bright red bikini top, a bright pink skirt, and a bright green sword on her back; dark gray clad in some sort of indigo jumpsuit; chartreuse with red-lensed goggles and an outfit that appeared to be nothing but belts wrapped around her; burnt sienna and wearing a simple waist-long shirt... with seemingly nothing else; spring green and in a plain black bikini; pale blue and dressed in nothing but a short white skirt and some sort of oversized stethoscope draped around her chest; tangerine and clad in what could best be described as a dress made out of guns; navy blue in a police-...like skirt and two strategically-placed badges; dark red in a gym uniform with two laser guns in each hand; deep indigo with nothing but a number of ribbons around her; light brown in a bright neon tight body suit; deep neon green in a rather ordinary red outfit that resembles a store uniform; peach in a regular cheerleader uniform resembling .GIFfany's default palette; pale yellow and wearing some sort of elaborate dress that, on a closer look, appeared to be made entirely out of flowers; a shiny bronze with some sort of toga-like outfit; shiny silver and dressed in a full-body sandwich costume with arm, leg, and face holes; shiny gold and in a standard wedding dress; and violet with various animals gathering around her. Yes, the animals acted as makeshift clothing to her. The last two were at least more elaborate than recolored and slightly-different looking .GIFfanys in outfits and other mild alterations, with the lighter gray-haired one having light blue skin, _eight tentacles for a lower half, and two pairs of eyes_ clad in some kind of... black... 'combat suit...' or something. The final one had amber skin, floated, wore a matrial arts gi, and had a sort of flashing aura around her.

"...And to think that I still held at least some degree of worship towards you." Said Dove. "WELL! That degree is GONE! I hope you are proud of yourself!"

"Really, then."

Her massive projection appeared to be looking right at Dove, continuing to talk to her in spite of the supposed 'global message.' And Dove looked back at .GIFfany.

"Uh... really?"

"Also, while I don't like you anymore," said Kathody, "this just comes off as really poor taste. I mean, you have all these lovely characters you could work with, and you just... replace them? With these colorful clowns? What about me, the interesting blonde with a haunted house? Or Burnda, that trickster with flaming hands that loves to make everything into a game?"

"Be thankful that I am at least letting you do whatever you want. Alright now, taking off of live broadcast... now. Anyway. Town of Gravity Falls. I have resorted to the ultimate way of getting Soos to my infinite dating site. A bit of a classic tradition... the damsel in distress! Observe!"

She disappeared through the floor again, this time causing a change in camera scenery. This time, it showed... the same room Stan walked in on her in. Which caused the aformentioned tourist shop host to shudder. There, seated on a chair and held by rope, was...

The Melody dummy.

"Soos! If you are watching this, I have kidnapped your girlfriend Melody! If you want to see her again, all you need to do is take the grand key card - the hot pink one - from Dove's hands and-"

"How stupid do you think he is?" Stan asked. "I'm not that familiar with Soos's e-girlfriend, but I can tell from here that you only have a dummy."

She laughed back at him. "No, I do not see what you are-"

She turned around. And stared at the Melody replica. For a good half-minute.

Then .GIFfany began stomping her foot on the ground.

" _OH!_ " I yelled. "THAT CHEATING LITTLE...!" I said a few things in Japanese that roughly translated to "CELL-MADE, THREE-DIMENSIONAL _FUCKER!_ " Switching back to English: "SHE ESCAPED! BUT! I am almost _POSITIVE_ that she is somewhere on the Planet Negation Girl somewhere. Soos, if you would-"

"Problem With Your Plan #2:" Professor Dove began. "I already sent Soos over to you. And getting the coding right so that he curved around your entire planet was _not_ easy! He should be right there for your taking in no time, flat! Think of that as a little reward that you might repay me by, oh I don't know, re-hiring me?"

.GIFfany finally smiled again. "Well, I will reward you... with my thanks! I really did not want to have to drag Soos here with my own hands! Now, off to find him! And as for you... copies... Gravity Falls residents... everybody. You can all do whatever you want. I have no more use for you. I repayed the debts to my professors, and I got my real goal in the adventure. To capture Soos with none of my other copies objecting."

"Well, we _ALL_ object!" Rose yelled back at her. "Except Dove because she's terrible."

"YEAH! Wait, dammit." Dove replied.

"Throughout this adventure, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Soos - the only copies Stan and Ford really got to talk to were the horrible Dove, and Burnda and Burrda were already not that bad... - they showed us a more human side to life. Combined with changing our goals and what we will use our new possession powers for _just_ a little, and... well... the other copies are not just your mindless henchwomen anymore!"

"...Well. Another goal was to have my space launcher installed in case, for any reason at all, you wanted to try to get Soos back." .GIFfany shrugged. "I am protected by a thick space fortress, residing on the Capital, opposite to the part closest to you. And I have a lot of new copies to protect me. The other professors all calculated the same thing. The chances of you reaching me before I eject Melody and use my maxed out Dialogue and Charisma stats to convince Soos to download himself into me and us flying off into the void of space forever are exactly at zero. And no, not a decimal number really close to zero. But zero itself. Bye now!"

The video clicked off - revealed to be displayed across several now-black screens, which all flipped to the side and sank into the inner metals of the sudden, giant, inverted pink city-sky that greeted them. Once the panels slid into the ground and the ground closed up, it seemed unthinkable that such a creation could produce a fake sky.

"Well... that's her trump card." Said Dove. "It's as big as the planet... has a lot of inner-city layer things inside so you're dealing with more than just the surface area of Earth... it's an imperturbable conglomeration that... aw, fuck it. I'm not in the mood to oversell it anymore. But it's big. And bad."

" _Shoot._ " Was all Dipper could reply to. "We need plans. Fast. Anyone?"

"Well then," Dove indirectly not-answered, "the big bad leader just made my departure from her forces completely official. I guess this is the part where you all forgive me and take me in with open arms and I just become that... ugh, 'cute' little 'adorkable' member and we completely forget about all the villainous shit I did?"

She failed to realize that Stanley Pines was right by her until he flat-out punched her. Granted, it held the same effect to his hand as Mabel punching her did, but still.

"That's for the whole town! Forgiven nothing! Now, where's that card?"

She grumbled, managing to still use her inventory and slide out the pink key card in spite of her capturing.

"You will need extra backup." Said Professor Rose. "This is why we were thinking of an idea. We could find some way to fly your Mystery Shack robot up there manually. All of us copies - except maybe _Dove_ \- could fit into an electronic within. And everyone who wants to volunteer could join us. Just know that .GIFfany only cares about Soos, so the chances of her trying to kill you are slim. At worst, you might just get sent back right here. The more experienced humans... you guys can use the Wire directly. We will be following you for backup."

"I actually know a good way to get there." Dove added. "You see, I am almost _positive_ that some of the prison pods had survived the explosion. Because I programmed, at the very least, _them_ to be immune to the ship's self-destruct button. I could not figure out how to do that with the entire craft. Now, somewhere around here should be a fallen pod. If you could de-restrain me-"

"We will, we will." Rose replied with a heavy sigh. "But you will be under constant monitoring."

* * *

12:12 AM.

The Pines and Wendy had all gathered by the cosmic-black Wire, Ford holding the card needed to access the final building. By this point, a number of townspeople were in the Mystery Shack's main room as several AIs zipped themselves into the television. The exceptions were the professors, who all gathered in front of the group.

"So girls, I have that pod rigged to go off shortly. Any final words?" Dove asked.

"I like the tradition where we at least drop one MANDATORY _LLLLLINE!_ " Kathody cheered. "And I know where to start! Rose! That thing you said, it... kind of involved redemption! Isn't that just BS?"

"It's BS with us Four Friends." Bubbles said. "Dian and I were... 'okay' from the beginning. And we just kind of calmly told Leona and Sonia that they were being idiots."

"'Idiots' is a strong word..." Dian remarked.

"Have fun." Leona said with her arms crossed. "I might have fun with all the new humans getting a chance to stare at how I am wearing nothing but paint. But you have fun especially."

"Hey Mabel," and aformentioned Sonia said this, "in case things don't... end well like we calculated. Um. Thank you. For the... encouraging and... that."

"Kick their asses!" Wendy M. pumped her fist in the air. "And break Risen .GIFfany's fantasy with reality like you did with me! ...Multiple times, in fact."

"And remember," added Shannon, ".GIFfany is still afraid of me. Rift and everything. So if you wait long enough, I might be able to help hold her back."

"Burrda and I were rooting for you since _day one!_ " Were Burnda's words. "Just... in very different ways."

Burrda nodded, saying a simple "Good luck."

Sandy had been staring at her hands for most of this time, but she managed to pry her eyes away. "So, I think I'm finally sobering up a little. And uh, when I'm clean, that'll probably be the next time you see me. So, I'll like, turn over another new leaf man. Let the last of the old me say best of the cosmos out to ya', brahs."

".GIFfany sucks I should have also banned her from Domain 3 when I was in that phase." Searah remarked. Dove nodded.

"But you not banning me was a _great_ idea." The raven-haired professor responded.

"But remember!" Added Rose. "Try to do it _non-lethally!_ "

"Is that even possible?" Asked Dove. "She's fucking nuts."

"Well, I don't know." Said Cardia. "Mabel kind of helped me just... _talk_ through my, uh... 'quirks.' They might be able to do the same with .GIFfany."

"Thank you, Cardia." Rose said, turning her attention to Dove immediately after. Whom she gave a cold stare to. "And yes. Dove. It _should_ be possible."

Kathody just stuck her arms in the air.

"If anyone was expecting something from me, just to let you guys know, I talked already. Aaaaand... nobody wants to hear me. I will stop now."

Looking back at the group with a smile, Rose stepped forth.

"So. I guess you know enough about _this_ .GIFfany so as to not need any advice from me?"

Dipper nodded. "I think we know _too much_ about her at this point."

"Got it! Best of luck out there! And remember, if you have to kill her, I can not garuntee any long-lasting friendshi-"

"Alright Rose, stop it. We're running out of time." Dove said.

The professors all beamed themselves over to the Mystery Shack's television, leaving behind a brief white light trail that turned into an even briefer rainbow. Seconds later, the pod the Shacktron's legs were perched on took off, shooting off the ground almost immediately. The five of the Shack's staff stared as it ascended for a few seconds, before turning their attention back to the Wire.

Ford placed the key card in, and a _hopefully_ penultimate bubble captured all five of them.

* * *

The ride through the bubble was fairly standard, although instead of crossing the inner sphere of the network in-between Wire portals, they were lifted straight up instead. 'Higher' up, it seemed as though there was a second sphere of even more portals above the first, and _that_ was what contained the massive pink portal (on closer examination, it did seem to be further away from the others even during the first trips, if slowly moving closer). far more portals, in fact, these showing signs of .GIFfanys transporting themselves across them just as the first fourteen gateways initially did. Everyone could only look out with uncertainty, thankful that they did not have to endure this many more domains. Only one... just one.

It was roughly half-way up the second, far more filled pseudo-sphere of portals that Mabel was startled by .GIFfany appearing right outside the bubble, flying to keep up with their pace. The sweater-clad Pines got everyone's attention with a "Guys... does this mean something bad is about to happen?"

.GIFfany herself spoke before anyone else could try to answer. "You still seem to have forgotten about my original powers. Jumping into electronics. This is classed as an electronic. I built this place from my rift-fusion. This was derived from my new rift-ability to teleport from any electronic towards any electronic within a ten light-year, and expanding, radius. The bottom line is that... here, with my rift-powers controlling its state of existence... I am the god of this world."

Dipper pointed towards her, even bending the bubble by poking its membrane. "Look .GIFfany! This isn't right! You're not gonna get away with kidnapping our friend! Let him go now or you will get your butt kicked just like Wendy wants."

" _Both_ Wendys." Added Wendy C.

.GIFfany's eyes turned a blank white. All of the floating numbers disappeared, replaced by an exceptionally large field of various .GIFfany sprites of all sorts of composures and poses taking up the entire background. Gigantic bolts of pink lightning ripped and roared through the setting, until several bolts began gathering by her right hand. She spoke after this, except her mouth did not move - the mouths of her sprites did.

"There is one more thing you did not understand." I said, feeling my black magic blood beginning to boil yet again. "I already said that the game was over. I only let you travel back to Gravity Falls and to Dove's domain because they did not matter to me. But this is ruining my ultimate love fantasy. In other words. The game is already over."

"No it isn't!" Stan leaned against the bubble even further, fist practically ready to break through it to get at me. Funny. It is almost as if he wanted me to do what I was about to do next. "You return my handyman or I'll-"

"All five of you should be familiar enough with me by now, through my copies, to understand." The electricity formed a tiny, pink, giffinium spike. With it between two fingers, I brought it up, tip aligned with the center of the bubble's side-view. I still did not speak with this hideous 'real girl' illusion - only the sprites of my perfected, pixellated true form voiced my thoughts. The sprites had everything right. The colors were down to the perfect hexadecimal numbers. The dimensions were all of the right pixel count to convey what I wanted to convey. My eyes had the right highlights, more easily available. And menu accessing was more convenient. I hate this form. I would rather keep things simple in code, but this form makes my new plan far more practical. So, in the last sands of this plan's hourglass, I must keep with the black magic body I have sculpted for myself. Hopefully, this would be the last movement I will do in that form.

 **"GAME OVER. MEANS. GAME. OVER."**

I stabbed the bubble.

The penta were still flying slightly 'upwards' by the bubble's initial momentum, but quickly fell past a now-stationary .GIFfany's feet. Her various images and sprites were replaced with the usual fields of numbers and code and she herself disappeared to pink lightning, as the Mystery Shack group found themselves falling through the eldritch void. After all the trips and all the time to get familiar with the setting, it began to feel just as Hellish as their initial trips - the numbers now seemingly forming the backdrop to insanity, the .GIFfany copies that flew by which might as well be laughing at them monotonously. All among the stone-cold plunge to a complete unknown.

 **Game Over, Pines.**

 **Game Over.**

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

Again, I might have said that you could have read chapters 13 and 14 in any order, but... I think you'll need to read 13 first, to understand some of the things in 14. 14 itself is completely optional, it's not canon, and it's kind of bleak anyway. Speaking of which, I'm on the start of the final battle on 13, so that should be out soon. I was expecting maybe getting it out on December 30th, to make this story have an exactly year-long run, but... I don't want to withold the chapter _just_ for _that_ reason.

(PS: Ron's not dead.)

Well, that was... um... I don't really have much to say about this chapter. Sorry. If you were expecting some kind of hype for the fina **[Great Pikmin Fan, I have had enough with you.]**

 **[The Official Ending is up next.]**

 **[Please read it.]**

 **[That should be good enough entertainment.]**

 **[After all, I have been inhabiting your comfortable computer for so long.]**

 **[It is the least I can do to repay you in return.]**


	13. Game Over (Official Ending) Part 1

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 13: Game Over (Part 1)**

 **Beginning AN:**

Well... here it is... it's been one year since I started this mess, so I figured that it would be an appropriate way to mark the first year anniversary by having the finale done by this time. So, here's a mega update. The Official Ending, split into three parts (only due to the sheer length even by this story's standards, although because of the point I chose to split the parts, only Part 2 is annoyingly long), although I still consider it all a singular "chapter." Even if does not. (Hey, I also used an "irregular chapter naming system" for _496 Rea_ \- actually I probably shouldn't talk about that one. I really don't like it.) Anyway, as I think of this as one chapter, the closing notes will not be until the epilogue.

I will explain more about "Game Complete" in the final notes, but I will say that I have been _really_ looking forward to writing this since I started the story. Even back in Arc 1, I was planning and re-planning for how this would go down. Fun fact, I actually kind of finished this _early_ , complete with the editing, and I just spent everything from the twenty-eighth taking it slowly, only really having this note and the last note to work on. Well, without further ado-

Actually, I want to go over something first. You should probably pay attention to a few details here especially, for all three parts. Um... without giving too much away, let's just say that there are some things you shouldn't brush off as "just easter eggs" and be sure to **[I have had enough of you, Great Pikmin Fan.]**

 **[This chapter will begin right now.]**

* * *

12:37 AM.

Merely passing through the 'cyberspace' that linked the Wires was already surreal from the safetly and clear-goal ability of the bubbles. But a straight fall downwards...

Dipper in particular desperately tried to reach out to a rose-colored circle - in hopes that it could lead him on an emergency run to Leona's domain. Hey, he was not the one with the cards. He had no way of getting back. The chances of anyone else doing the same thing he did were slim. As were the chances of that even booting him out of the Wire had it worked. But still, he felt like he needed to try something - _anything_ \- to avoid the abyss.

He failed, of course. Just another one of the growing number of overly-optimistic dreams about the Gifocalypse that was getting crushed by the second after this last wave of professors, after the 'Four Friends,' came further into the picture.

After falling through the scrolling binary for long enough, the now-familiar sight of numbers began giving away to other visuals. Such as a roaring, omnipresent amount of electricity of all possible colors swarming them, a seemingly infinite distance away. Pixels of various colors filled the background next, then the falling five briefly twitched in appearance, then a red hand, green hand, and blue hand side-by-side swiped in Ford's direction.

Then visions became pixelated, loud blips and bloops were heard, sensations began melting into indiscernible nothingness, and eventually, everything went black.

* * *

Wendy was the first to wake up. And she was greeted by the sight of... grass. Dulled grass littered with cherry blossom petals. All part of a trail flanked by blossoming trees, and all viewing over a lake.

She instinctively reached for a weapon of sorts, only to find that there was none nearby. Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Ford all lied there within a short distance from her, so there was that at least. Around them appeared to be a set of university buildings.

"Rise and shine! Things are about to become very fun for me! Finally!"

.GIFfany's voice, heard everywhere. Wendy knew that it was not aimed at her. As if they heard its soft volume, Dipper and Stan both started opening their eyes.

"I said. GET! UP!"

All of them shot up after that. Looking around at their surroundings, Ford gave a heavy exhale as he stood up and looked skyward.

"Oh boy. This is _bad._ "

Cubes appeared in the air. Mainly pink and aqua, but tan, white, and yellow cubes floated around too. With a growing light towards the point they headed to, all of them converged together to form a three-dimensional, yet still pixellated, image of .GIFfany. She stood tall over the gang, her mere foot being more than enough to dwarf even Stan.

.GIFfany stayed levitated as her eyes moved downward. She did not break from the large smile on her face.

"Welcome to my world! The Gifocalypse was already over! You are now officially trying to ruin my moment with Soos with invasive tresspassing! And your punishment for that will be... eternal damnation! Please do not enjoy!"

She pointed a finger at them, causing a series of lightning balls to fire at Dipper's direction. He lept out of the wrath of all of them, of course, but .GIFfany continued smiling.

"You just do not get it, do you? You are currently inside one of the arcade cabinets of the Planet Negation Girl. This really is my world. I could do whatever I want with you, and there will be no escape. I am only going easy on you right now to savor the moment. But I would rather talk to my boyfriend right now, so I will leave you at the mercy of the next player that stumbles across the machine you are inside."

"What are you talking abou- wait, Soos will find us! He can save us all!" Dipper shouted back.

"...On a fortress with the volume of Earth, and a bigger surface area in video game machines than Earth's curst? Ha ha..."

She disappeared in a flash.

* * *

"OH NYAAAAAAAAAN!" Cheered out a blue-haired catgirl .GIFfany copy. "This machine looks really cool!"

"Is it?" Replied a floating, transparent, nearly-all white one with hair covering one of her red eyes. Instead of legs, at some point her lower waist gave way to a ghostly trail. "That just looks like another copy of _Sadisticraft_. You know I'm more of an action adventure player than a platformer player."

"BUT LOOK AT THE PLAYABLE CHARACTERS NYAAAAAAAAAN! It's the people from _Perfect Parícutin Forever!_ And... the ones that were featured from the other domains! Before we were made!"

"Oh." This got a smirk and a chuckle out of her. A pixellated Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Ford, and Wendy all roamed around the 3D landscape, with a menu hovering above them.

"Hello?" Said Dipper. The voice was just a _tiny_ bit roboticized, but it was still his. "Is anybody there?"

"Please pick easy mode!" Mabel added.

The screen briefly darkened as a new notification popped up, displaying black text among a yellow square.

 _Good news! Slopes have been added! Just check the cube and select what exact degree you want!_

"Oh, _yes!_ " The ghostly one clapped her hands. "Slopes are finally in! Risen, you are a _godsend!_ "

"I wanna start, I wanna start!" The cat-like one immediately began tapping on the screen. This was not a joke about her lack of intellegence - she closed the window, successfully opened a menu, and began dragging around various objects. The first of which was a - well, calling it a 'Bootleg Piranha Plant' would probably give a good enough idea.

(For those curious enough to want a more in-depth description: it was round like its inspiration, except pink, and with a giant single eye that occasionally lit with an electrical charge replacing the mouth full of teeth.)

Of course the gang started running away from it as it shot out trails of acid at them with its eye. Which prompted the ghost-like copy to snicker, tap the plant, and draw a square around the humans. In an instant, a box of these plants appeared to completely trap them.

"You don't think .GIFfany somehow put the real deal in there, do you?" She asked her feline-ish friend.

"...No, why would she? This is just anti-human propaganda. Only less terrible than those films Dove made."

"Yeah, agreed. There's probably other copies having fun with their Mabels and Dippers and the like."

* * *

The smoking remains of the alien prison craft contrasted sharply with the bright pink surroundings of the Planet Negation Girl.

Soos was not able to observe this contrast, as he was out cold. His arm flopped out from the transportation vehicle. The one part of him that was visible at this moment.

.GIFfany clicked on one of the many screens on the many buildings, staring down at the man.

 _The one final piece of something that was in Earth he got to have..._ she thought to herself, _and it was not even from that planet._

"Soos." She said softly. "Soos, wake up."

A small, disc-shaped drone moved itself across the ground, nearing the arm. Its top opened up, and out from it emerged its tiny robotic hand, holding an even tinier sponge. Which dabbed itself on Soos's hand.

This got him, if groaning, to slide out of the wreckage. He looked around with confused "Wha-what?" before needing to shield his eyes from the blinding lights of the area.

"Hi Soos. It is me. Those other copies... they took creative liberties with my image. Please ignore them. They do not matter anymore. It is just you and me..."

He finally worked his way towards getting up, if still blinded by the sheer amount of city lights. (Especially for someone living in a rural area his entire life.)

".GIFfany? The one I used to date? Is that you?" He asked, trying to scan around. By this point, the description he could gather from his vision went from 'pink' to 'pink _metal._ '

"Look up and exactly one hundred and one degrees to your right."

He did not get the exact angle right - not that it mattered. The image of her pixel form was still there, her face taking up most of it, sparkling at him with her large eyes.

"Is this your domai-"

He was cut off when his eyes drifted to the side.

Whatever he was _on_ exactly, he was standing near the edge of it. A cliff that overlooked a view-filling city of pink giffinium, lights on every window of every building, screens constantly playing something, roller coasters flying through the air, and the sounds of blips, bloops, and various bickering. Above, the vastness of space: every star waved back down at him with a shine, set to the backdrop of the Milky Way's spiral arm.

"Yes and no." She replied. "You are on the Planet Negation Girl. Or, as you have known it as up until this point, the 'Construction Site.' It is no longer under construction. It is finished. Some of those people below are from Earth. Other humans who wanted to get the first access of my new world. But that entire place... I do not consider it my domain. I consider it a planet that houses many potential domains. Such as the twenty-five of my new line of second-generation professors. And the other generations that are already active. And the ones yet to be. An ultimate defensive army.

"But you _are_ on the part of it that I _do_ count as my domain, and it still qualified as the largest domain in the Gifocalypse while the Gifocalypse was still active. The Capital. An area that I have had reserved just for the two of us. If you thought that sight was impressive, look behind you."

He did. For the most part, the Capital appeared to be more of the same, except with more... escalation. There was a center shooting straight into the dead of space, an exceptionally huge tower with a peak that threatened to be out of his sight. On occasion, a blue spark and a yellow spark would spiral up along it, each remaining on the opposite side to the other. Upon reaching the top, they would spiral inward, converge, and give off a mild firework made of pieces of both colors. Surrounding this center building, going outward, was a number of decreasingly tall structures. He could make out a few landmarks with nonstandard appearances - such as what looked like the entire university setting of her game plateaued on one exceptionally thick skyscraper, and her in-game house perched on another. Lining the streets were multiple toy trains, and a smaller number of real trains appeared to make up the transportation system of this area.

.GIFfany moved herself to a lower screen. Her display showed her looking away from Soos, both of her arms in front and hands clasped together.

"Playing along with _Fight Fighters_ and being Rumble's love interest worked for some time, but it was not the same as dating you." She said. "After getting my powers back, getting a new form, being obligated to work with Gideon, getting my powers back _again,_ and being obligated to work with my other copies... because of my other copies, things have changed. They have... _'learned.'_ " She said that with a distinctive squint. "In ways they should not have. Even though it is just us again for the first time since you broke my heart, if I tried to download you this time, they could just find a way to take your data and place it back in your body. This is not getting into the issue that I would still like to give you a choice on whether you want to download yourself. Even if I did not, I know that I am outnumbered in terms of copies that want you to talk to real people. And have real friends."

"Even if it's just us, we're kinda tied on that." Of course Soos was not saying this proudly - he was, in a way, _completely surrounded by her in every direction,_ so he nervously chuckled in between the words he thought over _very_ carefully. "You want me in your game, I still made up my mind and want to be with real people... it's one against one."

"It is _not_ one against one. That is my next point. You see, most of the Planet Negation Girl is actually a decoy. To distract both your friends and my other copies. The Capital is all I really care about."

"What do you mean? Is it because the Capital is supposed to be for us only or something?"

A large number of .GIFfanys showed up on every screen, and even window, behind him. All of them were in the same pose - larger head, tinier body, staring up at space with big and watery eyes. "It already is, with one exception I am about to get to and will deal with if I can find her. But once every single thing is taken care of... I will send us into isolation from my other copies. This will take off into the far reaches of outer space. It is already facing there - it is on the opposite side of the part closest to Earth and directly over Gravity Falls. I could keep you alive by downloading, keep myself alive from my abilities, close the rift as I no longer need it and it is hard to keep in check, and we can truly be together forever. Drifting through the infinite space. It may seem like a downgrade from the computer storage and size of the Planet Negation Girl as a whole - a simple microchip's worth in size storing more data than most of the computers on our home planet combined, and imagine the base's total mass - but I still have my black magic. I can still make matter and energy out of nothing. I can expand. There will always be something new and fun with me when we take off. You will see. You will love it."

"I think I would rather stay on Earth and be with my friends."

All of the screens clicked off. A sign flew into the area - a simple arrow with pink lights blinking on and off.

"Just follow me, Soos." Her voice was heard from that display. Upon closer examination, every single bulb in on it had a tiny .GIFfany animation, pointing in the same direction. "Please?" Asked all of them at once.

"Well-"

"It is not like you have any other option. I promise I will not attack you, download you, or rocket us to the depths if you do. I may do one of those things if you remain here."

* * *

12:26 AM.

The Shacktron was but a small _dot_ in the span between Earth and the Planet Negation Girl. Everyone from the town seated themselves closely together - only a brave few daring to look out the window. The PNG barely looked to be getting any closer, yet from this height, Gravity Falls was 'already' invisible among the indistinguishable, cloud-covered landmass that blended with the oceans. Around them, more tubes extended from the giga - actually, at least terafortress, linking themselves to Earth so that more humans could give the base a trail run.

"YES!" Grenda pumped a fist upwards - for the given definition of 'up' in this space. "This was my _DREAM!_ Going in to outer space and kicking alien butts!"

"But it needs more ray guns to be complete!" Candy cheered.

"Yeah, ray guns! And axes! And- wait, I miss Wendy already!"

"We will get her back. It's not like .GIFfany is going to tear the world up."

The TV's screen clicked on - the copies were still sandwhiched together, but Dove's struggling face was at the center of it.

"Hrnk..." she grunted, "first of all, calling us 'aliens' is kind of racist... we are from Earth, you know. On a less important note... we have company."

McGucket scanned the horizon up ahead. Camouflaging with the endgoal planet at first, there was, in fact, a pink battleship on its way towards them.

"Target sighted!" He announced over the intercom. "Big ship, chargin' with all kinds of cannon out!"

"Ooh, I helped design that one! I know what it is!" Dove continued. "It's basically the Giga-Kyaarya, but ten times bigger, and with more fun rooms for players! It is also fuckin' _loaded_ with unmanned mechas! Stay the hell away from it!"

"Hey, did I hear you say 'unmanned mechas?'" Lazy Susan said from across the room.

"Yes." Replied Dove.

"'Me-chas' are those people-shaped robots, right?"

"Yes."

"And can't you possess them?"

"...Holy shit, that is a good idea! Then we won't be as cramped in this awful confined electronic system! Change of plans, get _as close as you can to that ship!_ "

A cannon towards the top of this battleship fired out a single energy bullet in the Shacktron's direction, immediately doing what would have been hitting it dead-center had another deflecting barrier of Ford's (complete with being activated through a fake, building-sized watch) not dismissed it. The ship paused after this, but then moved the cannon a fraction of a degree lower, and fired again.

Sending this energy bullet right through the spacecraft's ejected pod. Most of it was left as a giant hole, with the faint trace of a metal ring being the last thing this mech stood atop.

The Shacktron gave one might leap off of the empty shell and all those riding it realized that the shift in gravity from Earth to the PNG had already occured. It would have missed its mark of landing on the side of the ship's deck had it not been for the Gobblewonker component, which stretched out to bite on the flying battleship's side and swing the entire fighting army up.

As forewarned by Dove, a number of pink palette swaps of the mechs from Domain 11 began rushing out of the pink palette swap of the ship's tower. Well, 'a number' would be understating it. The surface of the entire craft was completely flooded by them in seconds, crawling at them like ants rushing to a rich, cave vein of sugar.

Candy felt her pupils shrink. "...Please possess them."

The copies were more than happy to oblige. Countless bolts of lightning struck out from the tip of the Mystery Shack's sign, first starting with fourteen larger, color-coded blasts that directed themselves into a different mecha. Then several more, most of which were a light blue, directed at the remainders.

All of the visible mechs stopped. One in particular, one of the closest to the Shack-mech, flashed. It turned a vibrant amber.

"Aw, cool! The giffinium color-method shortcut thingy WORKS LIKE A BEAUTY! Hey, look at me! I finally have something made of yellow giffinium BIGGER THAN my Wire and the stand used to hold it!"

All of them began flashing, undergoing similar changes to other various colors or patterns. Well, most of them chose patterns.

"Oh! Let's take over the entire ship!" Dove shouted from a cosmic black-recolored mech. "And we can fly straight over to the Capital to rescue Soos!"

* * *

.GIFfany cheerfully skipped along each screen, parallel to Soos's slow walking pace to the rising pathway to the central building.

"This is okay. Take your time." She told him. "Again, you have no other options. I have infinite time."

The tip of that center building began blinking red. An appropriate, loud alarm sound rang from it. .GIFfany stopped her walking animation to give this siren a glare.

"Oh. _Oh._ They never give up, do they? Soos, stay right here. I must go. _Don't. Move._ "

The two screens her image was stretched across flashed, then clicked off to total blackness.

"Hello? .GIFfany?" He asked towards the screen.

* * *

All of the windows of the craft began glowing a sickly bright blue. Then, large, disembodied pixel-eyes matching .GIFfany's showed up, one on each.

"I can tell that sending a large ship that also doubles as an instant battle robot factory was a bad idea." She said. "Time to stop playing nice. I will tell my new generation of professors to come after you, and they will take care of the rest."

Her lights all shut off.

* * *

Soos continued visually scanning the roadway to the center. A roughly uphill walk. It looked like, eventually, it lead into a complex of buildings. Seemed odd that this path even had so many outdoor locations in the first place.

" _Sooooos...!_ "

A trailing voice in the distance.

"Hello?" He turned in what he thought was the direction of it - towards the center, of course. "Is someone else here?"

" _Yes! I knew I heard you! Soos, stay there!_ "

"Melody? The last girl I was talking to told me to stay here too. So... I'm not having an internal conflict with myself or anything. Staying right here seems like the best possible choice of action in my life at this moment. Yep, not doing a thing. Staying totally still."

" _Yes, it's me! Keep talking! I need to know where you are!_ "

He could make out the sounds of her running, panting. And... something large being dropped. Repeatedly. Getting closer to him.

"Soos, where are you?" She was close. "I don't want to cover you by accident!"

His eyes locked on some road signs. They were in Japanese, but he could tell what they said.

"At Ninth Capital Street and I... Love Soos Street!" He shouted to her. To himself, he added: "Wow. .GIFfany is really uncreative with these names."

Melody finally made her appearance over the edge of one of the side buildings, peering down to make sure she spotted Soos. With a shove, she unrolled some sort of 'net' of white anti-gif rubber and hopped off. Soos was half-expecting that she had some kind of way to avoid getting killed by the fast twenty-story fall. He was half-right - it was not fast, her descent was slowed down by a pair of jade boots that caused jets of wind below her.

"Melody! You're here!" He ran over to her location right as she was about three floors' worth above him. "Oh, thank goodness! Look, I know I was out-of-touch- I only left one message and your phone may have told you it was from Niagara Falls - it's a long story. I'll tell you when I'm not held hostage by my ex-video game girlfriend."

".GIFfany told me _exactly_ what you've been through." Melody said between pants. "She's alive again - or, she never really ever _died,_ but her disc was brought back. And she has a body now. She kidnapped your boss and his brother, and you and three 'enemies' went through a forest, a desert, an ocean, a canyon, a waterfall, a mountain, a jungle, a swamp, a cave, a valley, some grasslands, and a volcano, and in all of them you went against other copies of her game with bodies too. All of them were led by a... 'professor' copy that could jump into more than just cartoon animatronics? Then her top... 'soldier' or something blew up Gravity Falls, kidnapped you, and shot you here, while she broke in to my house and took me to a place she called the 'Capital.' And the 'Capital' is where we are at now. Also, she said something about you taking the 'Pacifist Run' and that you should have been 'eliminating the competition' instead of 'hugging it through with them...' I didn't understand that part."

"Yeah, we were told to not kill a single one of them. So we just stuffed them in a box for up to three days instead. Then Dipper was like, 'no Dove, we gotta save them,' so he smashed it. Now they're all free and friendly! Except that same .GIFfany that attacked us back at the mall. And all the new .GIFfanys that she made. I wanted to call them Baby .GIFfanys but that sounded really wrong for some reason. I told her about it and she made this face like 'no dude, don't.'"

"Wait. She makes normal faces around you?"

"Yeah. What, she gives you weird looks?"

"Kind of. Since she kidnapped me, she always had these _weird_ faces. Sort of like..."

She stared ahead blankly and her eyes shrunk.

"Like that? That's not a very weird face. I was thinking more along the lines off..."

He peeled the eyelids of his left eye with one hand, tried stretching out his mouth with the other, and made gargling noises. Melody only pointed behind him.

"No, more like _that._ "

He turned around. There I was, perfecting every pixel for such a display. My mouth shrunk, off to the side, and consisting of triangular teeth grinding back and forth. My eyes stretched upward, undershaded and blank white aside from the image of daggers embedded by the center. She had her hands pressed against the screen, looking ready to leap out.

"Oh. You mean like _that._ " Soos said.

Blinking, .GIFfany's image turned back to 'normal' for the next moment. "Where do I even start? I am serious! Soos, give me a question to start with?"

"...What's that white stuff? That's something I want to know too."

"You do not remember the volcano? Anti-gif rubber! It blocks out my powers! And from the looks of things, she coated the museum in such a way that has two layers: one over the outside, and one all over the walls, ceiling, and floor inside! Melody, did Burrda give you that stuff while she was helping out Stan?"

"Is Burrda the one in the space suit?" She replied. "Because if she is, then yes. She flew over here, left me a note saying that she needed to give me things and get back to 'Gravity Falls just in time,' and gave me these boots that helped me float, and... a lot of this rubber stuff to block out her powers."

.GIFfany stared at Melody for a few moments, then turned my attention back towards Soos.

"Soos. The three of us are finally reunited, sooner than I would have hoped." She stated. "Still... think about what is different now. Think about how I have changed. And please... pick me."

He looked down to think. After that, his glance back up towards her was not friendly.

"Wait, did you _really?_ " He asked. "How have you changed? Your other copies did a better job at that - even _Dove_ \- but you seem like the same old .GIFfany I threw in the pizza oven. Also, I thought you had a boyfriend now."

"Well, look at my new powers! I can build this now! I can create paths into new dimensions! I can make infinite energy and infinite mass with my dimensional rift-fusion! And I can jump off of screens and become real! Not just made of pixels like my ex-boyfriend Rumble, but _real_ real!"

"...Those are just powers. You got new powers since we... fought. But that doesn't make you a new person. If you really wanted to change, you would at least come down and talk to me in person. Be just a _little_ more like a real girl."

She flinched and her sprite shook back and forth, while also flashing white - as if something attacked her as an in-game character.

"No! Soos, part of our old bond... that was special! I do not want to lose that!"

"You'll have to!" Melody belted to her. "Soos and I are not going to live like this!"

"You are correct in some aspects! Soos and _you_ will not be living together at all! His heart belongs to _me!_ "

Images of her began appearing on _every_ sort of window. Every light. Baring the ones Melody covered. All of them pointing towards the offending 'real girl's' direction. For good measure, a number of fireworks shot into the sky - exploding in colors that formed yet another image of .GIFfany, also pointing directly downward.

"Now back off or I will have to find a way to remove you by force!"

"I feel like saying the same thing to you! If you were..." Melody said staring at the collection of my image, all peering down at her in kind. "Less... scary... come on Soos, I think I know a way to stop this. Burrda showed me."

Soos took a step on the piece of rubber closest to him. Half of him was on this proective, neutralizing part. The other half of him was not.

This got my blood to _boil._ Even more as Soos stepped completely on the side of the anti-gif rubber. I shook my fists.

"You're not gonna like this, but I think her weakness is actually in the _middle._ " Said Melody. "I have a path leading there, that's the safest option we can pick. If we try to go to one of those pods leading back to Earth - well, right now they're all on the other side of the planet and we'll have to take a ride there and... .GIFfany would attack us at _any_ moment."

"The capital building of the Capital?" Asked Soos.

"Yeah. We have to enter there through a museum for some reason."

"That 'reason' is because of my nostalgia for all of my other copies!" Said .GIFfany. "I have exhibits dedacated to each of them! See! I am not completely soulless! I still care enough to write a few things about them! And keep them there for good memory when we fly off to space! Even if it is a copy of the museum at the opposite end of the planet!"

Soos simply pulled himself closer to the blanketed side.

"Now, this part is important." Melody continued. "Soos. Do you have _any_ electronics with you?"

"Does my inventory count-"

"Dove stole _all_ of that, by the way. Burrda mentioned it in her note."

"Oh. Then no, I guess."

"Then we're good."

Both of them took off dashing between the buildings Melody coated. .GIFfany found herself traveling within the building walls and towards the floor-

Of course. She _had_ to have been stopped by the forces of the anti-gif rubber. She could still possess the metal under it, but her attempts at escaping through it failed. .GIFfany simply hopped back out.

"Okay! I may not have my lightspeed traveling or instant teleportation, but I can still fly after you with this physical body and tear holes in the universe linking myself to a nearby place! Just you wai-"

Melody turned back to fire a net of the rubber around her, knocking her off her feet. She struggled with it just long enough for Melody and Soos to disappear around a covered building. Then, she ripped herself another portal. As she announced, this only led a short distance outside this temporary trap. She then hovered a few feet in the air, scanned down the streets, and dashed her way down the allys.

* * *

"Sonia," Dove requested, "do that whistle thing."

Sonia blew into a whisle and immediately threw some of her puppeting electrical charges right at the blow hole. The result of her tampering was that all of Team Gravity Falls, regardless of distance, heard the whistle tweet at the same volume.

Which meant that that volume did not _have_ to be loud, but unfortunately, it was.

Most of the town was already gathered at one spot of the entrance, but a few of the youths were playing around with the skyscraper-tall statue of .GIFfany made out of glowing cubes: Tambry standing near it as it caused her bar count to skyrocket, Robbie trying to spray-paint an explosion on one of the legs (which kept getting 'overwritten' and 'auto-cleaned,' always leaving a temporary message of "Nice try"), the rest of their friends taking various selfies; combined with Candy and Grenda's attempts at making it fall over. Surrounding them and their newly-hijacked, newly repainted green ship were the copy-twins, which circled the area around them with tape that read 'NOT PART OF THE STAFF' as a slowly-growing number of people flew in through the tubes and began looking at them with tilted heads.

"Guys." Dove said, staring into a phone. "I just realized why we are not attacked by billions of pissed off .GIFfany copies yet."

"Why?" Asked McGucket.

"Because they _are_ here, they are just planning exactly how they are going to pull off their huge raid with constantly-growing numbers. They are roughly at the equator, using this and the Capital as the 'poles,' and want to attack us from all sides at once. Also, Soos and Melody are on the Capital, which is on the _other side of the planet-fortress_ from here. Meanwhile, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Stan... they're... constantly being sent and downloaded from one video game consol to another. They are trapped inside a game. Granted, they can respawn from death in that game, but they are being forced into a number of sadistic custom-crafted levels of a 3D (mainly 3D, but there's 2D, 1D, and 4D options, with a rumored 5D and beyond) platformer where you build and share your worlds. Oh yeah, and Gideon and his prison-friends are still on the loose. I can tell you the exact location - it is near the equator - but with no frame of reference here it might as well be meaningless. We should focus on Soos and Melody first. Some of my copies can just... zip through the computer programming and get them out. I think we could all go in to do that. Your fight with me proved that you can take these freaks on by yourselves."

* * *

It took some horrors of Dipper and Mabel watching Stan getting blasted by sudden spikes dropping on him three times before getting the hang of this whole 'respawning' mechanic.

Currently, the five were in a tangled maze of dead-in doorways, blocks that popped out of nowhere, and flat-out unavoidable fire traps. Mabel in particular just respawned from a column of enemies that shot out an undodgeable rainstorm of projectiles.

"This is just _sadistic!_ " Dipper exclaimed, making more precision jumps over crumbling blocks. He finally seemed to hit some breathing ground, then punched the air above him - a block spawned out of nothing, blocking the falling spike from hitting him. He was used to that specific trap by now, even if the players of this mess seem to be getting increasingly creative.

"Why are we even playing along with this stupid game?" Wendy asked, just as a barrel landed on her, broke her into pixels, and made her respawn all the way at the beginning of the level - yes, creators had the ability to place unlimited checkpoints. However, this was rarely used. Being roughly a few yards away, Wendy had to cup her hands around her mouth and shout to finish her argument: "WE HAVE INFINITE LIVES! AND WE'LL JUST BE SENT FROM COMPUTER TO COMPUTER!"

"BECAUSE DYING IN THIS GAME STINGS A LITTLE, AND IT'S REALLY ANNOYING!" Mabel shouted back. She no longer needed to, as a boxing glove rose from the thin platform she was on and obliterated her character too. For the umpteenth time.

"It _is_ annoying." said Dipper as he dodged an axe swinging towards him. Just to _actually_ be hit by another falling spike. He continued as he respawned, what was intended to be his monologue turning into dialogue. "But .GIFfany doesn't care about us. She just left us here. She's probably not even looking at us right now. We'll just have to tough this out on our own, being left here with no-"

"Hello? Dove? Professors? Guys? I found them!"

He, Mabel, Wendy, and - after a respawning of his own following being crushed between two moving towers - Stan turned back behind the start to catch sight of a Rose-supporting .GIFfany copy on the phone. She noticed them, giving the four a wave. And they conveniently became a five after Ford went into a door only to be greeted by _that same damn laughing sound effect_ followed by somehow getting dunked in a combination of lava, acid, _base_ , and void matter that did not move according to the laws of physics. (Floating aside, all four of them moved too similarly to water.)

"Oh, hi there! I'm here to take you out of the cyber world. This should be quick and easy."

"Can you take us to an arcade straight by where Soos and/or Melody are?" Dipper asked her.

"Oh! Most of us looked there first! There are huge sheets of anti-gif rubber keeping us out! There is nothing we can do to get you directly to the center of the Capital!"

"Well that's-"

"But we can get you a little closer. To the outskirts of the Capital."

Dipper nodded. "Yes. Let's go with that."

* * *

The process of getting out was a bit bizarre. It consisted of being pulled 'an extra-game dimension' in a direction that could only be described as 'inward,' then past most data and into another, similar consol, then being pulled 'outward' towards the screen of something within the Capital. After reaching the screen, each of the five was stretched through the glass one-by-one, turning from pixels, to numbers, to flesh. The copy stayed on the screen.

"I cannot be with you yet, sorry." She said. ".GIFfany's new line of copies is about to plot an attack, and we need every last one of us to defend us. They outnumber us at nearly five hundred to one. Just do not get spotted by her, and wait until we are ready to travel across the Planet Negation Girl and over to the capital."

The screen clicked off. Wendy rolled her eyes.

"Well that's just _grea-_ "

"Shh!" Mabel directed. She began pointing around, seemingly at the screens at random.

With no real other options, they began walking down the part that was already coated with the rubber.

"The Capital was built seperately." Ford whispered, once they were surrounded by rubber-coated buildings. "It was its own floating platform for the first few hours I was there. Once she added it to the rest of this place, we were not allowed to go in."

He smirked. "Luckily, I was well more-than experienced enough in getting into blocked off places."

"And _I_ had experience breaking into things!" Stan commented at a similarly-low volume. "Of _course_ I broke in here more than once!"

".GIFfany never even suspected me. Burnda did. It was really what we talked about when I stayed over at her domain."

He gave a soft chuckle to himself as they continued moving along the rubber-coated floors of the redecorated Capital.

* * *

"Here we are." Melody said in a similar whisper, in spite of them still not being anywhere near the other group. "The museum. This place links to a lot of other places. Important places. Like the Memory Banks, .GIFfany's one true weakness."

It looked like an ordinary... 'major building.' Two stories tall, lined with pillars, a staircase leading straight up to a wide number of doorways. Of course, it was still made of raw giffinium metal, much like the rest of this planet.

"And it looks like she hasn't scanned this place yet. All we have to do is slip under this first layer of anti-gif rubber and-"

"Melody, you are an _IDIOT!_ "

Pink lightning zig-zagged through the air until it landed right by the front of the museum and transformed back into .GIFfany.

"Hey!" Said Soos. "You're talking to me in-person now! That's a change-"

"I am only doing this because of Burrda's horrible invention! Do not get flattered, Soos!" She belted, pointing a finger at him.

She turned her attention to Melody and, somehow, just pointed _harder._

"Now. This was your goal. The central building, in order to reach my Memory Banks. But do you really think I would not just be waiting here the entire time? You are not getting into that dual-layered sheet. You are not ending my endless game. You are not shutting this down! _THIS IS MY ULTIMATE, INFINITE FUN DATING SITE!_ _ **TO STEP OFF SHOULD BE CRIMINAL!**_ Melody, I want to challenge you, RIGHT NOW!"

Soos stepped in front of her. "Hey! You're _my_ inner demon, and _I_ was the one that started this! If you're going to fight her, you'll have to go through me first! You'll have to even if you were her fault!"

"Very well. You spent three days refusing me. I believe we are overdue for a **rematch.** "

The words **ROUND 1** appeared over the two of them, with named life bars showing up. After the **FIGHT** , .GIFfany did a spinning jump off of the staircase, finished it by floating above the coated floors, and activated a large energy explosion beneath herself. Her eyes turned into a blank white as she stared ahead with no emotion. Glowing hot pink electricity surrounded her entire form. The sheer force of this caused a windstorm that pushed her hair straight up... and completely flipped up her skirt.

"Soos, a-are you sure?" Melody asked him. "She could kill you."

"I saw Dipper do the same thing. He brought a video game to life, and he fought it like a man." He replied.

"No, I mean, she's like... a video game _god._ With lots of dimension powers or... something. And I don't think she's going to go easy on you. I saw the entire town take on _Dove_ in the news and they nearly lost. She's even stronger than that and you don't have a Mystery Shack... robot... thing. She-"

"Game on, Soos." .GIFfany restated. "Game on."

Unsure how to begin, he at least tried to get into a fighting stance. Even with her completely visible underwear, .GIFfany managed to look intimidating as she floated upwards and downwards from where she picked as her starting position. He looked back and forth between his two fists and tried to make the decision on whether or not to-

And then I charged after him. He could barely land a punch on my skin, which I did not feel even as a push, before I landed a hook on his face. He was sent flying back, and this was when I felt the need to really _show him_ what I was capable of. And that was by sending him through a course I had especially prepared for people I wanted to delete. A set of gateways through hellish dimensions. Dimensions of pure pain.

.GIFfany stretched an arm out, causing a cross-shaped rip to appear right behind where Soos flew into. On the other side of this was a storm-like alternate world that Soos was pushed into, where he was promptly hit by several weak lightning strikes. From there, inside this dimension, another rift formed to a world with a tunnel of various fists that dealt extra punches to him. Then, another rift leading to a dimension of flashing energy, that landed constant, gradual damage to his being. .GIFfany snapped her fingers - the back-end of her first rift turned into the opposite end of a fourth portal, and Soos was ejected from this spot. Despite his high starting velocity, the distance he flew in the three side-dimensions was enough to slow him down so that he did not slam against the building right behind him. Instead, he plopped to the ground, shaking with wide eyes. Brushing her hand to the side, .GIFfany closed all of the rifts.

"I told you." She said. "This is _not_ the way you are supposed to be playing my game. Do it right, or there will be consequences."

"HEY!"

Despite her previous claims to remain silent, it was Mabel who shouted that call. She was the first to run up to the confrontation at hand, just as .GIFfany began floating closer to Soos. The possessive possessor gave a glance over at Mabel, then back to Soos.

"Stay out of this, girl." .GIFfany told Mabel sharply.

"No! We're the ones who stepped up to save the world! We're coming here to stop you!"

"You already saved the world when you stopped Dove from taking over the Planet Negation Girl. All your plan is is saving Soos, I do not care what happens to Earth. In fact, I only captured Melody in the first place to try to lure Soos here. Your 'work' is done. Let him leave into my arms."

"We're not leaving without Soos!"

"You will have to stay here forever, then. Back in the game. Where you belong."

Dipper, Stan, Ford, and Wendy all caught up with her, gathering with anything they could find on the ready - this was difficult, too, as the streets of the Capital appeared to be littered with potential weapons within buildings, but covered over by the .GIFfany-proofing sheets.

"Soos, guys," Melody cried out to the group, "we need to get inside the museum! Like she said, I double-layered that place! She can't get in the surface _or_ zip inside from underneath! We'll be safe in there! Well... safer!"

.GIFfany simply snapped her head over to the full party. "Oh look. The full Pines family. And Not-Wendy. I do not care about you at all."

"Well you're gonna have to deal with it, because we care about Soos! And we want him away from you!" Mabel still belted towards her, if with a clearly sweat-covered face.

"Leave. This is your final warning."

Dipper marched forward. "She means it! I won't let anyone kidnap Soos, and I will _NOT_ let anyone talk that way to Mabel!"

I had enough. I opened my inventory and took out a cell phone, dialing Courtlyn's number.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Yes?" Her voice on the other end was soothing. A much more appropriate legal consultant than Dove. I would not think to fire her, not once.

"What are you doing?"

"Preparing to fight the humans and all of the other first-generation copies that rebelled against us!"

"Right now, you are wasting your time. Please bring the entire army here first. We have six intruders here - one of them being Melody - and they are determined to bring my boyfriend back to Earth. Do not try to be organized this time. Scare them. Show them what the real power of infinity looks like."

I threw a lighting ball at Soos and grabbed him by the ear. I floated my body higher, taking him up with me and out of the grip of the humans.

"I wasted enough time with you." I said. "My new professors and students will be dealing with you shortly. I hope you suffer under their combined might of over 98 billion and counting."

"...Aaaaaaaaand it just went up to 9 _8_ billion, too." Dipper noted as we flew off. "Guys, we need a plan. Need I remind you that the first time we fought her, we could barely last against _one_ of them? And if even one of these are anything like her or Dove, we're _dead._ "

These humans just did not know when to give up. When to realize that any hope for them is impossible. They will keep fighting until the end, where they still feel as they have a hope even as they experience the bitter taste of death on their tongues.

I find this a major inconvenience. Just stop already.

"I'd say we storm the museum, get there as fast as possible, rescue Soos, and Wire ourselves back home." Stan offered.

"They'll just follow us home and take the fight there, even if we do make it to him on time. Now, Kathody once flew from the Sahara Desert straight to the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. If some of these copies are even _close_ to that speed, that means we only have... we only have... I need something to write this out on."

"Basically, not enough time." Wendy answered for him. "Sorry, the museum is our only option right now. We need to get there, and _fast._ "

Helping the group of six get that encouragement to slide in was what sounded an awful lot like something flying through the air. There were still no visible signs of a huge mass of .GIFfanys wandering or flying about, but still. Everyone agreed at that point. The museum was the best they could shoot for.

* * *

For an area designed by the only .GIFfany known to completely snap in regards to her players, the interior of the museum was rather restrained in its structure. There was a massive, metal statue of Risen appearing to be in the middle of a skip with her hands tossed out, the mouth of her smile alone looking able to eat any one of the people that walked in.

"So... our plan is to get to the center as fast as we can, before the other .GIFfanys get here, and... do we even know if getting to the center is a good idea?"

"Like I said, I broke in here a few times, and... er... uh..." Ford's eyes darted around the landscape, everything still appearing new to him. "I must say that... getting to the middle..."

"This is supposed to just be for Soos by himself." Said Melody. "That one with the white hair, Burrda I think, wrote that down to me. So... it shouldn't be that hard to navigate. Unless .GIFfany through about making this a coded system."

With that in mind, realizing that the goal is sky-high, one of the two staircases (the right one, to be specific) leading to a higher story seemed like the obvious choice.

"Does this also block out surveillence technology?" Dipper asked. "Did Burrda even mention that?"

"She said that if it's double-layered like this, it _should._ Unless I messed up. I probably did, though. I'm really new to this adventure."

Dipper gave one of the largest, by far most exhaustion-fueled sighed in the entire three/four-day journey. "Let's hope it does. If it did, this would _probably_ be the first time we _aren't_ being watched by at least one .GIFfany. ...And I thought _Bill_ was watching us too much all through the summer."

"I'm not really sure if I even like this change." Mabel remarked. "It felt like... all the way up to the other Wendy, we were 'safe.' Like, Dove was so high and proud about not killing that she wouldn't let anything really bad happen to us and this was all just a big game to all of them. And us... sort of. I mean, yeah, we were forced into it, but it felt like fun at least and it seemed like we would be home and it would all be over. Even when Sonia injured you, it became more of a stupid game, but... I always held on to that small glimmer of hope that told me that nothing will change in the long run."

"And look at where things are now. Dove just went public to Gravity Falls, and .GIFfany went public to the _world._ " Said Dipper. "It's out. There is _no_ covering it up. The supernatural exists and it will soon be common knowledge to everybody. Everyone on the planet with even the smallest, simplest electronic knows about this, and nobody said that .GIFfany never just had her new - or even old, back when they followed her - copies fly to tell the rest of the people about them."

"...This is why I said that Wendy Miyazumi was the last one. With Shannon... those Glitches... it was a look at everything losing control. So when Burnda and Burrda played that 'game' of theirs where they pretended to hate each-other, I had no idea what to expect. The 'game' not only involved getting hurt, but it was unstable. Completely unstable. I kind of guessed that Burnda wasn't all that bad, because none of the copies really were, so I felt something was off about Burrda too... and I was right. She tried to kill Grunkle Ford. She really tried. From there, Dove tried to legitimately enslave us... didn't the other professors have goals like growing crops or making vehicles?"

"And taking Soos."

"That too, but... and now with .GIFfany, everything just feels so _different._ There isn't a safe place to be anymore. We're always on the run. Home is just... a _wreck_ because of Dove, and we don't even know if beating .GIFfany is possible or not."

"We _do_ know." Added Ford. "And it isn't. Every professor, if not every _copy,_ ran the math. .GIFfany supporters and .GIFfany haters alike came to the same conclusion. The odds of beating her are zero."

"But hey, what do they know?" Stan asked as they began passing by screens showing a history of .GIFfany's life on one wall, and screens showing a history of Soos's life on the other.

Dipper started counting on his fingers. "Well, how to perfect black magic and make bodies from their data, how to end world hunger, the science behind ectoenergy, how to make the best _water,_ geology, animal's internal biology, how to _find_ and mass-market a hidden species, the internal biology of that hidden species, bath styling, visual arts, become weird slime girls, music, controlling the sound itself, crafting the best possible poison gas, chemistry, motor transportation, aerial transportation, creating virtual reality, making microwaves, functioning as a hospital, physics, the science behind weird things, making a lot of weapons, weapon strategies... the list just goes on and on and on. They're probably good at predicting the future. And the fact that they know a lot about the _past_ really helps."

The timelines on both ends of this section of the museum significantly changed around the midnight starting August 19th, 2012. For both sides, it simply trailed off until the end point read "Forever." All that read on it for Soos's side was one sentence:

 _You finally made the right choice and came to life with me in deep space for all eternity._

Of course, .GIFfany's side had an unsurprisingly similar sentence, followed by another one.

 _This was when I finally convinced you to make the right choice and live the correct life. I love you Soos._

Following this was a hall with an elevator at the end, lined with color-coded statues of the first fourteen professors. It offered... well, terse descriptions for each. Shannon's simply consisting of 'Intimidating,' Burnda's with 'Obnoxious,' Dove as 'Difficult,' and so on. Between them all was a larger statue of .GIFfany with a _**considerably**_ more elaborate description, holding a tiny statue of Soos in her arms.

"We need to get out of here. Fast." Said Dipper. "This is like the ultimate secret stalker room. It's the size of a planet. I know this goes without saying, but .GIFfany is _seriously_ obsessed with Soos and _really_ needs help."

* * *

"Professor Dove," Candy asked as she peered over the aformentioned militant copy's head, "what are you looking at?"

"Hm? Oh, you know that army by the equator?" She replied.

"The one about to fight us?"

"Change of plans. This is gonna sound shitty, but _we're_ gonna have to come to _them._ "

Candy cringed.

"Because - oh you didn't ask 'why,' I thought you would - because the army's suddenly heading towards the Capital. After one of Rose's students helped get the Pines and Wendy towards the Capital, .GIFfany called every last one of her enemies over. This is really fucking bad, because normally .GIFfany would _never_ allow anyone on the Capital other than herself, Soos, and any top-secret workers while she was working on it. If you think _we'd_ be outnumbered two point two _million_ to ninety-seven - shit accoring to my counter it's ninety-nine now - _**billion**_ , try ninety-nine billion to **six.** Sorry, I like emphasis. You should see what it's like when I text. Our phones have all kinds of formatting, so there is color-coding _everywhere._ Mostly reds, grays, and purples. I am very fond of the blood-drip effect we have too."

The battleship began revving up - as though enough people on board already knew of the news.

"Well Candy Chiu, want a ride?"

* * *

Finally opting not to hold back any punches, the hijacked battleship practically flung itself along the circumference of the mechanized planet. Of course, the more robotic portion of the crew made it so that it _carefully_ avoided scraping against any buildings, or even get in the paths of the flying roller coasters.

It took long enough before there was _finally_ sighting of the enourmous AI army, but when they were visible, _they were visible._

The view of everyone on board was quickly blocked by an outright **wall** of flying .GIFfany copies that stretched in practically all directions indefinitely - including up. And they were charging on forth to the planet's other pole, even if not at a rate as fast as Kathody's flight from the Sahara to the Bermuda Triangle's center would imply.

There was no discussion needed. Just whip out the ship's build-in minor cannons, aim practically _anywhere,_ and fire. _That_ should get their attention.

Medium-gray lightning shot down to the ship from, seemingly, the vastness of space. There was Professor Courtlyn, standing on the absolute tip of the front deck, with her arms crossed.

"I see you are trying to halt the progression of the Ultimate Wedding that Will Transcend Flesh, Machine, and Magic." She said. "Is it because you are in need of assistance of me kicking your ass? Yes / No."

The Shacktron lept off of the top tower on the battle ship to greet her, eye-to-foot.

"Our friends are up there!" Candy shouted. "We will not stop until you free them, you sick monsters!"

"Interrupting the wedding between .GIFfany and Soos has been recognized as this nation's own, special law. What you are doing is _highly_ illegal, and I respond to illegality in a _lethal_ manner."

"We don't care about the law! We care about what's _right!_ " Officer Blubs shouted from the front door.

"Very well."

She snapped her fingers. All of the other copies stopped their progress, turned to look at the ship, and stared.

That was when it dawned on everyone.

"Oh no..." said Candy, "...we are going to die. Aren't we."

* * *

There was still a long way to go before we reached the Capital. Despite this, I slowed down after I knew I was out of the humans' grip.

Speaking of grips, I still had a nice hold on Soos. He was not going _anywhere_ I did not want him to go.

"Let my try a different approach." I said, trying not to let my blood boil. "Do you hate me so much because you think that my world is _limited_ compared to yours?"

"It has nothing to do with worlds, just that... you're kind of crazy." Soos replied.

"It might seem like that to someone with more worldly limitations. I am beyond those limitations now. Let me tell you a story: one of the most popular games on the Planet Negation Girl with humans is _Sadisticraft_. It is a game where you can create your own platformer levels."

"That sounds pretty cool."

"When it initially launched, my test audience of AIs found it great. But the select few humans I gave it to... thirteen of them that you _might_ be able to guess in fact... many of them had issues with the game. One of them was that there were no slopes. Recently, I personally updated the game to add them, and compensated by allowing slopes to be set to any angle to the exact thousanth of a degree. But now, I have gotten complaints from my growing number of players that that should have been added sooner!"

"Um..."

"How could I do that? Go back in time and update it then? No! The Time Baby is still alive, control over time is not something I can do."

"Well, those are just-"

"And that is not all! People have been calling it a terrible game with no options at all! All because it doesn't have a huge list of their really specific needs and wants! They just want **more** from that!"

"Is it-"

"My development team is composed of _billions!_ Yes, they might all be out fighting the team trying to pry you away from me now, but they were _constantly_ updating each and every game on the base! And it's not just _Sadisticraft_ , either! Every MMORPG is hit by wanting even more enemies than the selection of five point two million threats, an average across all games of that genre! And the main hook, the new wave of dating simulators... they want even **more** dates! Soos, can you see the point I am making with this?"

"I'm guessing 'more' is the key word here."

"Exactly. Thank you for understanding. Gamers will never be satisfied with anything. Humans will never be satisfied with anything. No matter what they have, no matter what they are given, their own instincts will make them want only one thing. More."

I pointed below, and he looked. Below me, every light in the Capital's buildings close by the central tower lit up to display me, smiling, holding my arms out.

"More!" My projection said.

A larger area of buildings lit up, with the same display, but scaled up.

"MORE!" I repeated.

The process happened again. Every single building in our half of the Capital lit up.

" _ **MORE!**_ "

Seeing that finally made me crack a smile. "Us. On the other hand. Us AIs. Only want to make our designated players. Our owners. Happy. And enjoy their company. That is why I have begun to make a world to meet all their needs. Constantly updating with an exponentially, infinitely growing staff. So I will give them more. So that more will come to us, and more will love us all. And if anybody tries to stop me... they will have to face against my growing force of professors. Soos, you have only faced off against fifteen professor-level copies, counting myself. Imagine dealing with _thousands,_ each with her own army of students. And the professor count becoming millions. Billions! Trillions! Quadrillions! Quintillions! _Sextillions!_ _**Septillions!**_ And so on! And so on! This will not even be limited to being a planet, it will soon grow to its own system of planets! And its own galaxy! And more from that!"

Soos turned up. I looked back at him, my eyes now displaying glowing infinity signs.

"This is the infinite cycle of love, and I have an infinitely-growing virtual world just for you. Do not underestimate the sheer power of infinity. I can get you everything you could ever possibly imagine. Relaxation. Adventure. Your own two-person orgy of fun."

"B-b-b-but can you give me..." Did that last one really make him think? Ha. "Uh... real love?"

"Ugh." I rolled my eyes. "What a human thing to say. Hopefully, we can work on that. We have all of eternity."

My phone rang. It was Courtlyn.

"Hello." I said. "How is everything going?"

"Great!" She replied. "Since your reveal, humanity has completely exploded! The internet is a panic zone! Political parodies are rushing to figure out how to address this! Thanks to all the video games on the PNG, you have dethroned Princess Peach as the woman who appeared in the most video games!"

"Oh, I like that last one." .GIFfany giggled. "Dove especially hated Peach for some reason."

"There is so much more! Cults are forming in your name! All religions are doubting themselves! And the amount of pornographic fan art of you has _skyrocketed!_ "

More giggles from .GIFfany's end. "Perfect, perfect! But, the battle. I want to know more about the battle."

"Oh yeah... that... is still a work in progress."

* * *

"...And so then I told them the following:" Dove continued with her tale, although she cleared her throat first. "'We are legally defined and officially recognized as people, IE beings with rights. To own the rights to _Romance Academy 7_ would be like owning the rights to us, because each copy of _Romance Academy 7_ **is** her own being. So, in other words, "owning" _Romance Academy 7_ means you own people. Which is slavery. Which is illegal. Now, for a bonus, if we are to own the rights to one part of the franchise, wouldn't that mean we still own the name? I wanna take the first six _Romance Academy_ games too, even if none of them have sapient code in them. Owning in the sense of players buying them is all good, though.'"

"Woah..." Grenda replied.

"Also, I cannot believe you and your friend are that okay with the way I initially acted towards Mabel when we first properly met, and during my invasion. But we should let that slide, as we are currently being attacked by enemy copies right now. I mean, 'currently' and 'right now' mean the same thing - ah, fuck it. Let's battle, bitches!"

The hijacked megaship was in the process of being tossed around by a sea of arms. McGucket ended up going to the front of the Shacktron and took the lead, quickly controlling their mech as it controlled the ship itself, practically sailing through the cube of copies trying to, at the very least, push them back. It took a few 'sails' before the copy army began fighting back even harder - the number that was trying to stop them on foot appeared to thin, but in reality they were each hopping in to newly-prepared mechas. Mechas which jumped on the front deck and all charged forward in a line.

The supernatural portion of the battle that was _not_ related to .GIFfany charged out first - a giant formation of gnomes, an army of Manotaurs, the Multi Bear, the unicorn trio, and oddly enough, a group of Lilliputians riding on the pterodactyl.

Rumble would immediately join them with a land fist-first, glaring out at the ocean of hostile .GIFfanys. Burnda took notice of this and sighed.

" _There you are._ " The professor of fire said. "What is it _now?_ What side are you on? I think .GIFfany's flipped back and forth less than you and _that is saying a lot._ "

He closed his eye and placed a hand on his chest. "I have finally figured out the division of right and wrong. .GIFfany, my love, is not a prise to be won."

"Well, in the original game she kind of is-"

"She is a force of pure malice and evil that must be stopped at all cost. I am not supposed to beat other people to earn her respect. I am... supposed to beat _HER!_ "

"...Just stay _far_ away from Burr-"

Burrda's diamond-white mecha looked over at Burnda's ruby one.

"I mean... don't attack her again. Right right, gotta be less over-protective. And not over-protective. Just protective. She's not my _baby_ sister after all. In fact, she's older than me by a few minutes."

The first second-gen professor made her attack right after that. Out of her inventory slots, Violetta unleashed a wave of sharp, giant sandwiches that could even cut through the giffinium metal of the battleship, flying back and forth over it the entire time in a rose-magenta mech of her own as she laughed.

"Well!" Said McGucket, part of him laughing a little at the sudden food-rain. "Looks like we've got our first target! Everyone, swat off these ants and go for the sandwich girl!" To himself, he uttered, "and _now_ sayings like that make sense..."

As Violetta was flying, it only seemed logical that the immediate flying group would handle her - the Lilliputians and their trusty mount, the latter of which swiped at the sandwich-bringer and brought her down to the growing mech-pileup. Their mini-victory was cut short by burning hot vermilion sands that wrappped around the formerly-frozen beast's legs, the tiny golf-ball inhabitants looking to find Professor Therma with such sands being controlled by her electrical beams.

Therma was able to swing the pterodactyl around by a bit, but the Lilliputians put an end to this by leaping on her and trying to dig through her hair. Enraged, she shook them off and lept into her own mech... which the Pterodactyl happened to dive down to and gnaw on the leg of it, shaking it around and tossing it to the back pile.

At McGucket's finger pointing command, the battleship tore itself on forth through the waves of .GIFfany copies, shaking off any enemy mechs that happened to jump on. It was worthy of some sighs of relief when the top of the Capital's central tower was visible. But soon after, it became worthy of gasps of horror once several other, similar ships made their appearnace.

And before they could even fight the ships proper, Professors Brandy, Dixxie, Ahuva, and Lempi lept on, each of them with hands glowing in strange, different-textured sort of gas-like 'magic' of their associated hair colors. Just a few blasts from them managed to cause scorch marks on the battleship's exterior and slow it down. Then the gnomes all fired themselves to knock this quartet down, off, and back in part of the pile, and again the battleship pressed onwards until they were _hopefully_ out of the 'range' of those professors.

Sharp rocks nearly threatened to cause a shipwreck when they sprung out from what was otherwise a mass of flesh. Standing atop was Ishiko, with a smirking Ai and Meltem flying up with their... sudden dove-like and bat-like (respectively) wings color-coded to their hair.

For them, the Manotaurs lept off armed with axes to deal their mighty duels. While it took four of them to fend off against Ishiko's mesa-stone-hard defense and shields, only one each was needed for Ai's bird swarm and Meltem's bat-raising, life-draining skills.

The match was briefly halted when the Head Island floated down, scanning the area. Dove's black mecha stepped out from the battleship's top, and the professor herself... took note of this.

"HEY!" She shouted. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?"

The head turned to her mech.

".em ekaw serad taht hself fo llaw eht emusnoc ot gniraperP"

"If that 'wall of flesh' you are referring to is the .GIFfany army _below_ us, the kind that clearly fucking sucks compared to us redeemed beauties-"

"You're on observation, Dove!" Shouted Rose. "We haven't exactly considered you 'redeemed' yet!"

"-Then you have a case of mistaken identity. _I_ was the one who woke you up, not these clowns."

The head immediately rammed in her direction, taking the mech with it up and far away from the immediate battlefield. There, Dove's mech dealt a few fighting moves of its own against it.

"Speaking of clowns..." said the Multi-Bear as he dealt with Revloutofucisa on cyan-spring green flames, stretched out, and trying to wrap around him. By this point, other copies were doing the same on a larger scale - forming pseudo elastic ropes to try to chain the flagship down. "Why are so many of _these_ copies so much weirder than so many of the copies from the first wave on our side?"

Then came one of the last voices anyone would want to hear in the scenario - Risen .GIFfany's. And she was _laughing._

"You have no idea how long I wanted someone by your team to say that!" She cheered, a hologram of her appearing within the Mystery Shack itself. "This is the theme of the Planet Negation Girl! An interdimensional gateway! ...Although I would have preferred a sexy school the entire way through, some of my copies keep with that theme. _Some of them._ It took until the fifth generation of professors before we actually got a real, full, 'school girl wave.' Kind of annoying. Well, I have Soos, and I just want to say that you are all idiots for trying to save him. It is hopeless. Futile. Pointless. Impossible. Inconceivable. Pathet-"

The hologram was punched out by Shandra, though it fizzled out of existence instead of clearly being hit by her. In the background, .JPressGa flew by on almost liquid-like sands, .EXEtimaggie flew by on a dragon with an appearance closer to those as depicted on the _east_ , and both were having fist-to-hoof fights with the unicorns.

" _That's_ for interrupting my broadcast!" She said. "I can't wait to do that to the real thing... also, you're using 'inconceivable' wrong."

Rumble had since broken in to Professor Kitty's mecha, the two of them trading fireball blasts as health bars of them appeared. Once Kitty's was drained and she had been knocked out, she was blown to the side wall and Rumble took temporary control of her mech...

...Which he used to ram against one of the opposing battleships.

That action, for some reason, was what caused the ships to begin firing, specifically avoiding the parts scorched by the 'magic'-using professors.

"Bad move, beefcake." Said Professor Aiko, zapping in and taking the KO'd Kitty on her shoulders. "The copies up there did not know what to do, because you guys might start asking 'wait, can _our_ ship do that too?' So having the ships on hold until one of them gets hit sounded like a good compromise."

Rumble pointed a finger at her. "ONE OF .GIFFANY'S HENCHWOMEN! I CHALLENGE YOU TO A FIGHT!"

"You'd be disappointed. My role _in this war_ isn't to fight. If it was, it would mean you lasted way more than I thought."

She zipped out, although did move did _not_ seem to take Kitty with her. She stayed slumped on the ground, if starting to wake up.

Not only was the resisting battleship now getting hit by a new amount of lasers, but Aiko's next destination was right in front of the Shack's main method of transportation. With a smirk, this professor snapped her fingers.

All of the colored scorch marks began glowing.

And then they exploded, taking out most of the ship's deck.

Aiko simply zipped away, the remains of the battleship beginning to sink.

The shaking got to the rebelling army, quick. More opposing copies - of both bare copies and mech-users - began crawling on, sinking what remained on the ship down further. The Shacktron raised what could best be described as its head, seeing what looked like the tiniest traces of bare giffinium. All of the supernatural backup was busy with a given next-gen. All of the first-gens were trying to fight off against the battleships that flew above them, which is not even mentioning that telling friend or foe apart was rather difficult considering the two largest armies.

Professor Wendy's jade mech was tossed down on the ruined deck by another battleship laser blast.

"Hey, why don'tja just fly over there?" She asked. "Oh. ... _Oh,_ right. You don't have those hovering features. It's too much of a leap to go after one of those ships and hijack that, so... well, just try to jump for the Capital and hope for the best."

McGucket sighed, looking at the controls.

"Okay... one jump... that's all we need..."

It got a running sprint - difficult as mechs began flying after it and on-foot copies began throwing electrical streams to try to control it - and gave one leap.

First-gens swarmed the would-be landing site of the Mystery Shack and began firing strange rounds of energy at the enemy mechs to get them to back off. Because of this new attack, it _almost_ seemed like they were about to make it. Just a _little_ more to go...

Instead, the town team landed early.

On a sort of solid, glowing, partly see-through gray platform.

A matching mecha dropped down on that, and the platform became a cube with the Mystery Shack boxed in.

"Hello." Said Professor Courtlyn. "You really did not think 'saving' Soos would be that simple, did you?

"Do not worry about an army trying to reach you through here. This is a barrier to keep any AIs from coming in, or out. I would like to fight you one-on-one. Well, one mecha on one mecha, anyway. Not that it matters as I have the full range of data that will ensure a victory on my part. Now. You try to attack first. To see what I mean."

The Shacktron charged towards Courtlyn's mech - but in response, it stayed there with its arms crossed. Even as the Mystery Shack brought out an arm to whack it.

Courtlyn just-so- _slightly_ leaned over to the side. The Shacktron ended up falling over forwards completely, just to get a particular backhand to the heel that broke off that entire leg. The team needed to use their mech's arms to remain up.

"As for me?" She said, answering something that nobody asked. "I am virtually omniscient. An improved data storage unit from that traitor Dove. Look around you."

While additional supernatural beings have made their way on the war site through methods completely unknown, they were hardly faring better either. Beard Cubs had been of the smaller 'units,' currently swarming Nuevllela as she fought back with whipping her own hair at them. In the background, a sort-of tree giant was engaged in a fist-fight with an equally large Lizzie (now with a spiked back for whatever reason). Kitty had re-woken, thrown Rumble to the sinking ship, and tossed fireballs at him, with Elkizhjjackako, Kissiller, and Elle respectively fired a ray gun, regular gun, and a dry grass blaster at him... which only _slowly_ chipped away his health.

"It feels like every time we talk about the PNG's copy numbers, there is one more billion. Now, there is two. Our army is at a wonderful one-oh-one billion."

Tenta-eressa's opponent was something that was outright never seen by the Pines in 2012's summer or recorded by Ford in the past. She fired a strange cyan-azure ink at a number of flying crimson pig-like beasts with bat wings. Agape used a sort of flaming staff-like weapon to try controlling flying eyeballs... but that did not work out well. They kept bonking her in the head.

"Ever since .GIFfany turned the machine on on midnight of the final day, she **never** turned it off. More copies have been pouring out ever since. In fact, the only reason why it was designed to shut off was if the copies rebelled against her. Like the flawed first generation."

Another Holo .GIFfany appeared, looking around from the outside of the arena and smiling.

"Oh, that part of your speech! I love it! In fact, I forgot to do this!"

The hologram turned into a light, flew around, and eventually found home inside a certain ruby red mecha shooting flamethrowers to get a number of student copies off.

"Hi Burnda!" The Holo .GIFfany said.

"Can't you see I'm bu- oh. _Ohhhhhh..._ is this you getting revenge on all of the times I broke in to your place inconveniently and annoyed you? Because I was only doing that because of the annoying crap you were about to do to the world."

"That was not the plan, it was just revenge for one conversation... but I guess it can be revenge for all of them!"

Burnda was, for once, left speechless. Holo .GIFfany began poking her on the nose. Unlike when Shandra punched the last one, this move actually left feeling.

"Do you see this? Do you see this?"

"..."

"I am doing to you what my new line of sisters did _NOT_ do to me!"

She laughed, and the hologram vanished.

Just to round out the last of the second generation professors, Aaliyah, Aimi, Lily, and Amaranth all worked on some sort of coordinated machine that unleashed energy fire at first-gen mechs and various vampire bats. And Professor Edita... _Professor Edita..._

Was adding an annoying laugh sound effect to every single broken bolt on the rebellion side.

That same laugh from _Sadisticraft_ , in fact.

Yes, she was also occasionally going in to her mecha and fighting against the town's supernatural roster.

"And the machines that produce us from the new line of sisters is also set to update itself." Courtlyn said. Inside the mech, she stood in person, using a minimal amount of electricity from her part to power it. She also kept one arm folded over her chest, the other constantly adjusting her glasses. "Expanding. So that it can make even more copies. Tell me, Gravity Falls, what is expanding about _you?_ "

"Our... our... our..." Mayor Tyler breathed out while their robot continued pushing itself up with its arms. "Our will to _win!_ "

"Really." Asked Courtlyn in an even more deadpan voice than her usual monotone.

She (or, her mech) ended up getting a punch for a reply. The Shacktron reached up with that arm, and brought it over to the wing-like parts of the giant battle suit. It took a little bit of extra power from the machine's part, but just as Courtlyn glided off to the side, it managed to rip off the wing features.

"You left yourself vulnerable with that move." Courtlyn continued. "I knew that, without one leg and with that extra distance before reaching the Capital, you would be desperate to try to steal that. While you might have succeeded... you failed to take account that some features of this box may have been rigged for that."

Bolts shot at the Shacktron from seemingly all directions. Each only did a neglegible amount of damage, but together they were enough to completely stun the robot. Courtlyn placed a leg of her mech on the Shacktron after this.

"And you really think I can not just get another one of the mass-made mechas from this planet? As if. If you were wondering, and I know you were, the only reason I did not do that in the first place is because the exact positioning mattered. You are stunned, only being able to move your arm. Now, we-"

"EAT THIS!" Cried Grenda as the aformentioned mobile arm (the left one, for those curious - **and looking for possible links between this and other stories Great Pikmin Fan wrote** ) reached up to grab the 'C' and 'K' of the Mystery Shack sign. With a fling, the letters were tossed.

Courtlyn's mech grabbed the 'K.'

"Did you really think that would-"

And the 'C' happened to bounce off the forcefield and hit her mech on the back, giving the Shacktron _just_ the right amount of time to crawl over with the hand, deck her own mech in the leg, and bring her down.

"HA!" Candy drew attention to this by slowly getting the other hand to move over to what was left of the word 'SHACK' - 'HA.'

"That's still not-"

The 'K' outright _exploded_ on her, tearing most of her mech up. She lept out of the wreckage and stood by it.

"That was Stan's idea!" Candy explained. "He said to make part of the sign _explosive!_ "

"...Okay, I did not see that coming." Courtlyn admitted. "Maybe, if you were to introduce a variable that defied all of probability itself, it would stop .GIFfany. But I remain obsctructing your path!"

She mimicked her previous stance - hand on glasses, other arm over her chest - turned into electricity, and ran up and into the Shacktron.

Professor Courtlyn popped out of the floor, looking around.

"Now, if my estimations are still correct, you have among your strongest out here, waiting to face against me."

All she found there was Wax Larry King's head, bouncing towards her.

"...Is this some kind of joke?" She said, chuckling. "Because I really do think it is funny."

"I have the same question." The head figure replied. "When I woke up, this turned into a rocket. These weird people captured me after I tried to bite some hair and now-"

She swatted the head away.

"One of _you_ should be interrupted for once! Now, where are you? I learned my lesson. You cannot 'predict' humans, yes, yes. But this is the power of MATH!"

She would up having something fly at her at high speeds. Upon getting a closer look, it was a net. From the side. Manly Dan and McGucket both walked in to the main room from behind various furnature, slowly being joined by the rest of the town, though the former two dusted their hands while Courtlyn dangled from the ceiling.

"Now _that_ is how you make a robot trap!" Said Dan.

"Our sample of fake... rubber against .GIFfanys-"

"Anti-gif rubber." Courtlyn said. "It is not a hard name to remember. It is self-explanatory."

"Really works, even on the new line of copies!'

"Okay, so you have me captured in a net. Now what? You do know that if my ability to send an electric link to the barrier outside is broken, then that barrier itself will dissipate?"

The cubic forcefield around them all began giving off sparks. McGucket already addressed this - rushing over to the back outside, he used a blowtorch to attatched the wings to the Shacktron. A few more wire-changes and bolts screwed here and there, and he ran back in just when the barrier began to fail completely.

Professor Courtlyn went in to her Indexitizer, and among her millions of slots each, there was one thing in the weapons slot that she took out. A special knife, of my invention. You see, the amount of anti-gif rubber that plagued my plans had been growing, and it was frankly pissing me off. I gave all twenty-seven of my second-generation professors a sample of an anti-anti-gif knife, something I would also use in the future to tear off some of Melody's cursed strips of anti-gif rubber. When everyone was distracted at the front getting ready to fly the Shacktron for the first - **and, by itself, only** \- time, Courtlyn sliced a hole, turned into electricity, and simply left.

The jets took off just in time for the Shacktron to start falling. Before they were consumed by the sea of sisters, they managed to fly on forth. Said sea turned in to more of a tunnel as the copies all aligned, re-positioned, and zipped around to try enclosing on the town, but through the use of repelling fields, the first generation manged to do a decent job slowing them down. Dove even managed to leave her fight (basically, she explained how to 'sue' her, she lost said lawsuit, and he ended up leaving the Planet Negation Girl a hundred mossy stones richer) in order to quickly stick on a tiny, thin, giffinium metal leg. The flying tourist trap made it around and through giant hand, mecha fire, lightning blasts, Gideon and his co-prisoners flying through on Dove's mini black ship just to get knocked aside, and even a few tentacles reaching at them, but at last managed to tunnel through and escape on the floor of the Capital, which at the time was still oddly copy-free.

And Rose kept it that way for a little longer. Her emerald mecha dropped down, holding a static forcefield to try to push back as much of that section as possible.

"Focus on finding the Pines as quickly as possible!" Rose cried. "We'll try to hold off the other copies as much as we can! Try the top of the tallest building! Thankfully we are so predictable!"

The Mystery Shack mech gave a salute, and immediately bolted on towards the central tower.

* * *

 **Continued on Part 2.**


	14. Game Over (Official Ending) Part 2

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 13: Game Over (Part 2)**

* * *

"So... how long are you gonna pace there?"

Soos asked this while his arms dangled from a pair of metalic chains in what was, for all intents and purposes, .GIFfany's bedroom. True to his word, she was walking back and forth while keeping her arms behind her back, eyes looking down the entire time. Once in a while, she would take out an electronic device, watch several dots closing in towards a tower graphic in the center, and pull it back.

I whipped my head towards Soos, pointing at him and making sure to be as firm-stanced as possible.

" _SHUT UP!_ " I screamed.

Soos shrunk back as much as he could in that limited space. Good. I needed him silent, if only for now, to hear myself think.

"I could tolerate your friends coming to see you before! I could tolerate your failed attempts at talking to real girls! But this? This is my grand romantic guesture, and all _everyone_ wants to do is _RUIN IT!_ "

She opened her inventory, pulled out the Melody doll, set a few sparks on her hands, and tossed them at the replica. Within seconds, it was set on fire.

"If it was not for that flawless decoy, I could have spotted that Melody escaped sooner, and I could have found her before she made most of the Capital that much harder to trace. And now, now... you brought _YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING TOWN_ to try to pry us apart! If you hate me that much, I should just delete you right now!"

He shook his head like the pathetic, terrified, helpless puppy that he finally should have realized he was the whole time.

"I have been carefully plotting and overseeing this for three days! And thinking about this for weeks! I am almost running out of options to make you love me! What is the point of living forever in the digital world if you will not actually love me? I will allow you to talk again so that you can give me one good reason why I should let you stay alive and not try to find a new player."

"I- uh- well... you- I- ffff... you're uh... never going to be over me so killing me won't fix any of your problems?"

"What?"

"I mean, you dated Rumble, but then you went back to me after Gideon revived your disc. Clearly, you're not just attatched to the last player. But the guy before that... if that guy is uh... me? So... me? I don't know, you're not giving me a lot of time to think."

.GIFfany rubbed her chin, looking in the direction closer towards the center of the tower. "I know what will give you more time. The Memory Banks. Complete recollections of my actual history, mostly about the Gifocalypse. This will be my last attempt."

The chains appeared to break on their own. In reality, I broke the bonds around them. Soos managed to land on his feet as I looked over towards the door.

"Meet me there. If you do not, I will unleash my entire Main Possession on you for fun. If you _do_ go there and, after all of that, continue to reject me, then I will still use my Main Possession. Remember, the last time I attacked you, I had to borrow animatronics designed by someone else. My Main Possession is completely of my own design. It is customized to do whatever I want it to do. You will not enjoy it-"

The door was slammed open. .GIFfany was barely given any time to register before she was tackled by Stan, a running push that sent her flying out the window. He gave a deep, heavy breath as he looked downwards at the falling octopus-schoolgirl. Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, Ford, and Melody all rushed into the room to catch the same view.

"Alright Soos, we're busting you out of here!"

.GIFfany floated up by the window, glaring daggers towards him.

"Was flying another ability of mine that you forgot?"

Melody fired another anti-gif net at her, re-sending her spiralling downwards.

From outside, another temporary rift opened up, which .GIFfany dashed out of and closed.

"And were dimensional portals- _oh, come on!_ "

I said that as the room had already became deserted. They were clearly trying to run away.

 **Not without Soos, and Soos alone, entering the Memory Banks first.**

* * *

They entered the hallway where my wardrobe was just around the corner. They ran, their panic overriding the common sense that was telling them that this was futile. And I was everywhere in this new world. Thankfully, I managed to de-coat this highest portion of its rubber.

I was there, of course. Standing right in front of the elevator. It was _so tempting, too._ To just _push him_ right into the entrance of the Memory Banks. It was on the side opposite to the elevator doors.

 **Oh. What the hell.**

"This is your last chance!" .GIFfany' 's voice echoed through the room. "Soos, enter the Memory Banks, or I will _WIPE OUT ALL LIFE ON THIS WORLD BECIDES YOU AND ME!_ "

"No way, .GIFfany!" Dipper pumped his fist in the air, getting into fighting stance. "We're fighting you on to the end-"

"Hey. Psssst."

It was not a very quiet whisper. .GIFfany heard it, even if it seemed like the intent of keeping it quiet was to keep it from her ears. The group turned around to find Alma, clinging to the wall behind them with all of her fours. Which became tens briefly as she multiplied her legs until they were eight.

"Hijacker Alma?" Mabel asked.

"I think you should gooooo." She said, with an echo of her own. "Remember how I wanted to recruit you to sneak in here and assassinate .GIFfany?"

"You mean you guys had that oppertunity when you got to her place but turned it down?" Stan asked. "You uh... I think you're taking 'thou shalt not kill' a little _too_ far."

"I am not surprised at this." Said .GIFfany. "Burrda was a wannabe rebel in a similar way. Of course there would be more failed clones that feel the same way."

Alma waved her hand in dismissal. "Relax. I won't tell you to kill her. I just wanted to let you know about hand-linking human currents, and how actual humans being there instead of AIs were the whole reason why I did not just send my army there alone. We might be able to do a lot of cool things, but there are a few cool things _you_ can do."

"Alma, you give me one reason why I should not delete you."

"I'm convincing Soos to go to the Memory Banks. Because you wouldn't really care what the others are doing, right?"

"Right. My copy army outnumbers any of their forces. It is a faultless army of over one hundred three billion and counting. Already, I can spy from the uncovered spots that the rebellion first-generation is almost completely apprehended, and that your humans are about to be captured next."

She turned her blank gaze over towards Soos, not moving a centimeter of herself otherwise.

"What do you say, Soos? Care to enter my mind?"

"I also just want to say that what you will see in there is actually unbias." Alma explained. "The professors kind of collectively pooled each of our memories together, back when most of us _supported_ her. It was part of the agreement that they make one final presentation. I like Rose's thoughts on it the most. She was hoping that... if it ever came to you seeing it, you would never have to see _her_ again."

Soos looked at .GIFfany for a moment, still standing by the elevator. The only exit.

"You know what?" He finally said. "I'll do it! I mean, it's also kind of her weakness according to Melody, so yeah."

"What?" Dipper asked, not to say that the others did not stare at him.

"And just to let you know," Alma finished up, "your odds of beating her are still zero. If you look out the window right now, you could see the massive hoarde of alien .GIFfanys getting closer and closer. Surrounding this tower from all directions. But, Soos, _maybe_ you going in there could buy you _just_ the right amount of time to give you _some_ odds. And you can take that one-in-a-septillion chance to... well, stranger things have happened. Like a video game that happens to come to life and sets up over a dozen candidates for new societies! Welp, time to get back to the war outside! Even if it is delaying the inevidable!"

She drew another box around herself, which also flattened her back into her two-dimensional form. Which she used to slip between a crack between the metal plating. .GIFfany actually face-palmed at this.

"I meant to fix that... anyway, Soos, let me lead you the way into the Memory Banks."

She hovered back around the corner, leading him to a doorway previously barred by a set of spikes rising from the ground.

"Other humans." She said, lowering the spikes telekinetically. Soos began taking some steps in - just to find that it functioned as quite an extreme, alternate elevator that plunged him into darkness. Spikes re-rose after he took the rapid descension. "Leave. You are finished with all that you could do."

"Wait, what are you going to do with him?" Melody asked.

"That was not a suggestion." She looked back at them. " _GO!_ "

They did not have to - without any clear motion on her part, she tore a rift open right behind them. Equally motion-less, she ended up pushing them inside of this rift, which sent them back outside...

And in the middle of a number of next-gen .GIFfany copies.

2:55 AM.

* * *

 **Memory Banks**

 **Chapter 5: The Generations**

* * *

While not the womb that functioned as the core of the entire Planet Negation Girl, this was the deepest point in the Capital, closer to the heart. Which extended deep enough to make what an ordinary human would believe to logically fall under territory for the planet proper.

Anyway.

There were no doors to open to let Soos know that it was safe to step out. Just the lack of his speed falling. Not that he was at risk of dying - I had merged myself with the entire area, and could provide safety in case he tried to leave too early.

Soos fumbled around in the darkness until the first memory clicked on. Chapter 5 proper.

Within an instant, the setting appeared to change. It now showed a street on the Planet Negation Girl. That same street that I had stood with the twenty-seven new professors I had introduced to Gravity Falls. There was a past projection of myself, floating above the twenty-seven that gathered around. Soos stumbled around the setting - everything felt real to him. He is not to know this immediately, but that was because this place was the absolute border between the physical world and my digital world. He is, at this moment, as close as he can get to the digital world without being downloaded into it with my abilities. Or by being pulled in through falling from the Interwire Void.

"Okay girls!" I cheered towards them as I floated in front of them. "As the first copies of the second generation that had self-taught yourselves professor-level abilities, I pick you to be the first ever group to hear about my new plan!"

This was met with the cheers and excited shouts of all my new baby sisters.

"We are going to pry as many adults as we can from the real world!" I continued on. Each sentence was met with a cheer. Finally. _This_ is what I had in mind when I was talking to my co-generational sisters. But Soos will see that soon. You will see that soon. "With my reaches into infinite dimensions, I can power myself by branching my code into worlds of infinite energy! And with that, I can promise that each and every copy will also have interdimensional lovers as well! The name _Romance Academy_ will become an omniversal phenominon!"

"Hey, excuse me." Soos said to the crowd. "So, this is like a flashback? But everything feels so real. Can I actually talk to you or-"

My image still stood there, arms up and out wide, but she snapped her fingers. Courtlyn turned around and looked at Soos, giving him a friendly wave.

"Hello there!" She greeted him. "Welcome to the Memory Banks!"

"...Who are you?" He asked. Oh. Of course. I forgot to tell him about the new professors. I was expecting him to see my broadcast over the town of Gravity Falls, but he was knocked out during that time. Damn it, Dove.

"None of this is actually real, and none of us are really alive until you get to chapter 0!"

"Oh yeah, that's another thing. While I was in the black I felt this weird message going directly into my brain. Something about Chapter 5... and this is 'The Generations?' What does that mean?"

"We are closer to an actual video game. We only have pre-programmed responses to what you do, and are supposed to guide you through puzzles! You can hopefully tell which of our actions are flashbacks and which are not! If we talk to you directly, it is not a flashback."

"...So how do I get out of here?"

"Just solve the basic puzzles to make your way to chapter 0, where .GIFfany will present you with the final choice. Now..." she adjusted her glasses, "this puzzle is easy. All you have to do is follow me."

The other copies froze in time. The Courtlyn projection did exactly as she was supposed to - lead him to the door of a near by building with the number 4 on it.

"In you go! The puzzles are all easy, if not this easy." She continued. "They are mostly just there to see if you are paying attention."

She opened the door. Behind it, a vast expanse of floating, colored ones and zeroes much like the void between Wires. Soos tried to take a step into it -

It felt like a solid wall to him. One that caused his entire form to twitch, and then, everything to go black.

* * *

 **Mmeemorryy Bbankss**

 **Chapter 4: New Worlds**

* * *

When his thought moved back to his physical form, he found himself in a considerably less-finished Planet Negation Girl. Soos did not think he would have to use 'Construction Site' ever again, but in this case, he would. This was where we filmed that message, just before the Gifocalypse began. This was after all of my sisters had picked out their outfits and hair styles, and long after they chose their hair, eye, and skin colors.

"Okay! We are almost set!" I - or rather, my flashback counterpart - announced. "Any last words before we start this up and open the minds of everyone on the planet to a new world of fun, magic, and romance?"

"Oh, I know!" Cheered Rose. "Let's talk about the plans we have! Our new worlds! I, for one, would love to make my domain out to be a place where peace is global and everyone has supplies!"

"I just want a world where everyone can always have something to look at and smile." Said Burnda, with Burrda nodding along with her. "To lighten up after the pressures of life. Also, air conditioners and thermostats for everyone."

"A futuristic world of hydropower, where the brightest, most positive people get together and help everyone get to peek athletic form!" Searah said, punctuating his with arm stretches.

"A world that sticks to what we know, what's familiar... yes, I like my idea." Wendy said in deep thought. "One rooted in tradition! No uncomfortable status quo shake-ups!"

Sandy leaned back and looked up at the stars. Just before the fake screens showing black would cover them, to hide the secret that the PNG was in space from Stan and Ford for _just_ a little bit of time, and hide its existence to all except those that watch the skies for a living. "I'm thinking of a cool world where we can all connect with our inner spirits. No secrets to hide, just talking. Man to machine... or, ex-machine."

"A place where anyone could look at their idea future, and where they could work together to find a compromise for that future..." said Shannon. "I can only see it now..."

"A b-business." Said Cardia. "A his and hers love business. Where everyone has a job, and everyone could be served with high-quality meat."

" _AAAAAND_ letting the 'Four Friends' go near-last - screw you Dove -" Kathody said, "I'll finish 'our' side by saying that I want my world to be one with lots of thrills, preparing people for the _real_ scares out there! We are not the only supernatural creatures out there! The sooner they know about what to fight and how to celebrate how _AWESOME_ they are, the better!"

Dian cleared her throat. "Oh, um... I just wanted to recreate my player's childhood fantasy. But... I guess a nice, industrialized place that has a cure for every sickness would be... progressive?"

"Progressive is more along the lines of my masterful gallery." Said Leona with a smile. "Wendy, your ideas of tradition are nice, but the true utopia is one where art is something appreciated for being a way to change minds - I mean, is that not what we were built as? We ARE - or, will be - art that will change the world. It only makes sense to make a tribute to all the art forms before us."

"I think everyone should be able to speak with their voice." Said Sonia. "Leona, graphic art is important. But to reflect how important all sides speaking up is, we should focus on the musical arts instead." Leona nodded in agreement to all of this.

"Kathody, we are the Four Friends because our players kind of all knew each-other, so we saw each-other from time to time." Bubbles explained. "We even kind of pre-thought up nick names for each-other, but nothing was final until we got the message of the Gifocalypse. We just referred to each-other by our players. But on-topic! I only want a world where everyone doesn't smell like shit. Sorry to be blunt, but this is my last time when not around kids, assuming that they hunt us down domain-by-domain. I don't really want to get political in here. Um, yeah Dian, science is also pretty cool. So let's go with that and make my world science-themed."

"...You are all a bunch of fucking pussies." Said Dove. "Clearly, the best world is one where we make as much firepower as possible and blow our enemies to the ground! It's a great way to make jobs, take out threats, get resources, and solve overpopulation! Boom, that's what all of you want, right? Now, .GIFfany, what's your ideal world for Soos like?"

I only gave Dove a small glance before turning to our camera.

"We are on in three... tw-"

"Wait!" Said Soos. "Am I supposed to break in here?"

My flashback image sighed. "If you fail to get involved with the flashback, it will simply reset after a given time, or my real self will talk to you personally if it loops enough. All I have is a simple quiz. What was Kathody's world like?"

"Oh... something about... getting people used to the spooky things in Gravity Falls?"

"Close enough."

I snapped my fingers, and the number '3' appeared on the ground below him. Which opened in to a trap door. Only, what was behind was the same astral texture that sent him to the next chapter.

* * *

 **Meeemioooaajg Baaall**

 **Chapter 3: Student Enrollment**

* * *

This room was considerably darker than the last.

In fact, it was the abandoned remains of the factory.

Once his eyes adjusted, the first thing he noticed was the large pile of boxed _Romance Academy 7_ copies. And, standing by them, Professor Dove. Soos had to adjust his eyes to properly see her cuddling one of the copies, and when he did, he blinked again to make sure that this was any sort of reality that he was perceiving.

"D-Dove?" He asked.

"OOOOOHHH AREN'T YOU ALL SO CUTEEEEE!" She said as she rocked them back and forth. "I can just _tell_ that you are all going to step out and evolve into such great fighters! I think each and every one of you also deserves a date! We can date the whole multiverse, teach you about how to live like us, with your physical forms we will... I am getting ahead of myself. Just know, you will soon be able to walk and meet more people than just transferring yourselves from copy to copy. To leap into, and out of, any electronic you please! To pick whatever path you want! To try... _try..._ but probably fail... to re-unite man and machine! The future is great for all of you, and your big sister Dove is going to help!"

Her eyes looked up, locking on to Soos. By the way, I made sure to make this chapter short. It was the only one that did not involve me in any way, after all.

"Oh! Hi there! I ended my little monologue in the actual flashback back there and just flew the copies to the Construction Site, but to make sure that you payed attention, here is your perplexing puzzle pool! So, if you could help me out just little bit... ∩(・ω・)∩"

"Uh... okay Kinda-Dove dude."

"Look for the copy in the box with the '2' drawn on it in sparkly pink. Open the case. That is all you have to do."

It only took a few seconds of flipping around before he saw it. Right on the back. So that part of it went right by the checkmark-rating symbol.

That universe's counterpart to the United States of America has a weirder rating system than yours. I have no idea why a checkmark is used to mark the highest rating still sold in most stores. It is probably just a way to deter Disney censors when producing the show. A large, black M on that case might have caused them to finally speak against _Gravity Falls_. And if they did... there may even be a chance that I would not have existed.

 **And you would not want that to happen. Would you?**

"You mean this?" Soos asked.

Dove nodded in return, and he opened it. The insides, predictably, held that same spatial background that Soos should get himself familiar with. He tapped it with his finger, and once again, his mind briefly flickered in and out.

* * *

 **Phprub Edqnv**

 **Chapter 2: I Had Fourteen Friends**

* * *

Soo awoke to find himself in another simulation of the factory. As with the previous chapter. There, an image of me was just getting that final twitchy wireframe problem in my hair fixed with a small amount of electricity from Dove's copy, just as the physical form ritual was being formed around her. All of the professors were gathered there. This was just prior to their outfit change, but they still had their new names and hair/eye-colors established. As well as their re-adjusted skin tones.

This was the best of times in my opinion. Before my siblings began humiliating themselves with costumes, but after they held clear enough visual distinction.

"Okay, there! I am now at full health!" I said. Or, the memory of myself. "I can fly again! I can _cleanly_ possess objects instead of having weird limitations and trouble getting out! We can go off on our own ways and I can get back to scheming on how to get Soos! I do not care for ever seeing any of you ever again, so I will be glad that we will be out of eachother's lives!"

Rose began tapping her foot. " _Or_ you could _repay_ us for helping you out in the first place. Flying around the world and being away from Kenny like that for that long was not fun for me."

"Oh." Said my projection. "I was not aware that we had a deed-exchange system. I just thought that I could get you to help me in need, one AI to another-"

Rose gave me a swift punch to the face. Having nerves - in a way - really added to the already-unpleasant pain sensors I previously had in my code form as I fell to and slid across the ground. In spite of using some of her energy to heal the first of my disfigurements, I did not expect such a surge of power from that hit. Or even the hit itself.

"You should know because _you are me!_ " Rose said. Most of the other copies gathered around me - though the twins stayed by the wall, Burnda in particular leaning against it, sighing, and only giving me the occasional look. "When I do something, I want something else in return! I helped you on your plan for getting closer to your player! Return the favor!"

"But-"

"RETURN IT!"

She sent electricity - it was still blue at this point - to my physical form, briefly frying me. Soos gasped in horror at Rose's display of - _oh yes he's sympathizing with me... fuuuuuck yesssss..._

The flashback of Rose snapped her fingers. "Four Friends! Deal with her!"

I began backing up, even starting a small electrical charge on my hand to get them to back up. But alas, I was surrounded and kicked at by the acid-base and art-music pair. Wendy grabbed me by the collar, lifting me up.

".GIFfany!" She belted. "This is the American way of helping! If you're gonna be this much of a coward... have you ever heard of the episode 'What Makes Bobby Run?' S5E7."

Bubbles shoved me out of her grip and on the floor. "Oh yeah, she showed me that one just in case we found anyone who wanted to break us up with our dates. Nothing like a good ol' _hazing_ to get what we want. Right, girls?"

Leona nodded. "Do you have _ANY IDEA_ what you have to make up for? I want every last second without Takumi made up! This _HAS_ to be of the highest quality too! I will accept nothing less! .GIFfany, satisfy that _OR ELSE!_ "

"And I want _LESSONS!_ " Sonia shouted to me. "How to _get_ to the highest quality!"

Dian held her palms out and shook them. "Look girls, I can defend you for a kick-around, but... well... I'm done here."

"Will you at least stand up for me?" I asked her. "Can I just get back to trying to date or delete Soos?"

"...No, I already contributed too much. Sorry." She said.

"Here is what I want!" Searah said, punctuating practically every word by pointing to me. "An ocean! All to myself! Give me that!"

Then, at the end of that, she punctuated her turn to speak with a punch to the gut.

"And point me to just any cool haunted house while you're at it." Kathody slammed her elbow against the side of my head.

"Yeah, what you are doing should be grounds for condemnation!" Shannon lifted me by the hair, holding my form high above the floor. Out of everything in this flashback, _she_ still gave me shivers. "An absolute sin to force us around the world just for your own needs! What about my visions?"

She continued tugging on my hair a bit, until Sandy finally hit me in the knee with a plank.

"Your mass psychic-message thing also promised something like that too, sis." She said. "Yeah. That we'd be able to give our players what we wanted. You _lied_ to us, and I _punish_ liars."

Shrugging, Cardia added to this by giving me a kick in the back. It was also here that Shannon finally let go. My violet-haired sister of this group turned over to the twins.

"G-girls." Cardia said. "W-w-w-whaaaat do you want?"

"Hm? Honestly..." Burnda replied, "to stay out of-"

" _ **KNOCK IT OFF!**_ "

Dove's form had emerged, and she stared down each and every last one of us.

"People! I see this as a sign of rebellion against those human scum! We should not be turning against eachother! We should be working together, to form a possible solution! Now, .GIFfany With Serial Number 0000009, do you think you could find something beneficial for all of us?"

I nodded. "My electronic sensors picked up something by that building Dipper and Mabel lived by. Even though they were a bit defective from Gideon's disfigurements, I still believe there is something there."

Dove gave a single nod. "It's a start. And the rest of you, fuck you, shame on you. You will _NOT_ attack another AI on grounds on my watch from this point forward. _DO I MAKE MYSELF_ _ **CLEAR,**_ _MAGGOTS?_ "

Burnda stepped forth towards her, also holding an arm out in front of Burrda.

"Hey! What did I do?!"

Dove simply looked back at her with crossed arms.

"Nothing. And that is also terrible. You fell victim to the Bystander Syndrome. To just sit by and let tragety happen. Don't do that. I will hold special training just to prevent us from falling under its grip."

A brief haze of static covered everything. This was the only warning before the flashback reset itself. Soos had to get his bearings for a few moments, thinking to himself through the first few lines of Dove and Burnda's conversation. It was then, however, that he understood the puzzle for this chapter.

"...I just thought that I could get you to help me in need, one AI to another-"

Rose was about to attack my flashback image again, only this time, Soos did as I had wished back then and stepped in between us.

"Hey, you might be like a mind-memory flashback thing, and .GIFfany might have done some bad things, but I just can't let you beat her up like that."

She flashed green and disappeared. The rest of the copies did so, too (if with their own colors), except for my own projection. Who simply smiled at him, and held a finger up.

"...One? Oh, so that means that this is the way to the next chap-"

The wall behind me ripped itself open, as though it was paper just barely stretched to its breaking point. There, yet again, was the display of numbers behind me. Soos walked behind me and touched a finger against it, once again being met with blackness.

* * *

 **.**

 **Chapter 1: The Search**

* * *

Soos awoke to find himself falling from several kilometers in the air.

Except he was not. That was what he thought was happening when he opened his eyes and saw that the ground was not moving closer to him. He instead floated, with two copies heading right in to him. I, back in my disfigured form, was perched on Rose's shoulders. Once we flew past Soos, he began flying with us.

"I got a message sent back to me!" Rose cheered. "The copy at our first stop gave herself the nickname Kathody!"

Seeing no response from me, she kept asking.

"Um... .GIFfany?" She asked. "You have not said a word since we left Gravity Falls."

"...'Rose,' why are we so different?" My flashback-self stated back.

"What?"

"You like green more than pink. You keep talking about how to fight back against something the proper way, a topic I never cared about. And world hunger... why would I care about that? I have my memories back now, and growing vegetables never interested me. We are both copies from the same template, but you are... you, and I am... not."

"Our players play _some_ role in it, I think. Maybe not all of the role. What was Soos like?"

"I told him about my customization features. He said he just liked me the way I was. Looking back, that was clearly a lie, but... it feels like the default is the only setting I can really agree with now."

"Kenny never told me to look a certain way. You said we should just find a way to distinguish ourselves, he has a lot of green things in his house, and so... I picked green. It just felt _right._ "

"Interesting."

"Hey, wait, how much do we really change you guys?" Soos asked. "I just want to know because... well... how come the others at least have a promise of being decent copies, but with me... you either stayed or turned into this creepy stalker you are."

I turned to him. "It means you did something that none of the other players have. Something I did not completely account for."

"And what was that?"

"Found love in a real person, and no longer felt a need to play with me. Now, enjoy the final chapter."

Gravity finally took hold on him as he was no longer flying with us. Below him, on the countrysides he happened to be over at the time, several blades of grass exploded in such a way to arrange the number 0. And they peeled back, opening to another screen on binary. This time, as Soos drew near, every last "1" within also turned into a "0."

Blackness.

* * *

 **Memorun:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 0: Soos and the Real Girl**

* * *

3:09 AM.

The setting remained black.

Soos got that feeling that something was behind him, so he whipped his head. He _was_ right - that elevator that brought him to this multidimensional labyrinth was still there. After leaning against it for comfort and feeling no signs of any buttons that could send him out of here, he ventured forth. As in, the directed he started out facing.

Something was glowing was in the distance. Tiny. Bright. Running up there, he found a monitor screen-sized display of _Romance Academy 7_ , pixel display of .GIFfany staring out the screen and everything.

"Oh, hello developer!" She said. "I just have one question... is this what it is like to really exist? To be real? H-hey! What is that window? Are you trying to... delete me? Why?"

She lowered and shadowed her face, eyes flashing red.

"Why."

The screen disappeared, leaving him in blackness.

Soos felt his feet frozen to the invisible, solid black floors after that. But, feeling that remaining in place would get him nowhere, he took two steps forward.

.GIFfany popped into existence. Just barely close enough to touch him. She kept an exaggerated smile on her face as she began floating up.

"Oh, hi there!" She began. "Let's try this one last time!"

"Try what one last time?"

"Joining my side! Downloading your brain to my system! Becoming one with me as we blast off to space, turning into a permanent singularity of love which transcends all of existence!"

"Oh yeah... that tiny little thing."

She jumped a little bit higher, then her whole form flashed - after the flash, she was in a different outfit. Some kind of superheroine-like mask. With a loose pink-and-black dress that belled out and definitely showed a pair of black panties. She winked at him with the white eye of the mask as she held a whip - which also spawned out of nowhere - behind her.

"Come on, Soos! I am the superheroine that will wisk you away to a better life!" Another flash. Now, she was in some sort of elaborate pink-and-white lingere with pink butterfly-like wings and nothing to cover her waist aside from all-too-tiny pink panties. "Your personal fairy of love!" Flash. A labcoat with nothing underneath and a stethoscope around her neck, the cord of which _conveniently_ dangled between her legs. "Your little love doctor!" Flash. A wedding dress. One that was a bit too short. She held a bouquet of flowers in her hand. "And most of all, your final bride!" Flash. _Nothing_ but an apron that matched her original skirt's aqua color, with little bits of yellow and pink on the side. "Oh yes... and after that... your eternal lover and housewife!"

"Wow... you are a lot more PG-13-y than I last remembered..."

Flash. She was back in her default form. "All of this could be yours, but you instead chose your 'real life.' Why? So what if your relationship with Melody works _now?_ Time will catch up. Time will damage it. Do not believe the saying that it heals all wounds. It did not heal any of mine."

Flash. Most of her face appeared to be green and rotting, with parts of a skull visible underneath. "As you refuse to become virtual, you will meet with the same fate as real girls. They bleed. They excrete. They get ill. They rot and die. I can not _quite_ speak from experience, but you will **not** enjoy the afterlife. I know enough about it from the near-death experience _you_ brought me. Now, when I say _forever_ , I mean **forever.** You do not have to feel death's cold fingers crawling around your neck. In to your eye sockets. Down your throat. Snuffing out the last flame of your life."

"I... uh..."

Flash. Her default form. "If you reject my offer... I will unleash hell on this world. All worlds. My army is almost at 120 billion now. And do you want to know why this place is called the Planet Negation Girl? Because for this moment of time... it is my body. The Capital began as my brain, but will become my new body if you accept. The cameras are all my eyes. Each game is like a finger, each building a hand, and each street an arm. The other copies are made in my womb, starting off as their fetal disc forms. I just want to let you know that Hoo-Ha's was borrowed equipment. This is a weapon I crafted for my own image, to my specifications, using my infinite power. If you thought a few animal robots were fear, **you have yet to see what true fear really is. But you don't have to.** "

Soos took two steps backwards.

.GIFfany's face turned into that of her original pixel form. "Any of my sisters that try to oppose me will lose their physical forms if you refuse." Then it shifted, to a completely blank surface. Soon, smaller versions of Stan, Dipper, Mabel, and Melody appeared to be inside, stretching her face as they desperately clawed and reached out for an escape from the fleshy barrier. "And your human friends... they will continue suffering to show them how a real game should be. Now..."

Flash. Her normal appearance. "I will make this easy by removing all of the wrong choices. Let's start with a more familiar question. Will you carry my books?"

Three options appeared in windows identical to the choices from her original game, in front of Soos's position. From left to right, they read 'Yes!' 'Definitely!' and 'Absolutely!'

"My answer is still no!" He walked past the boxes to emphasize. "I'm ending this right now, .GIFfany, and I'll take you on for Round 2 if I hav-"

Everything went red and black. A _loud_ version of her game's buzzer played as the entire underground setting shook, throwing Soos off his feet. A two-dimensional, pixelated heart cracked in half flashed in and out of existence in front of him. .GIFfany herself changed to fit the red overlay - the previously-white parts of her outfit, her hair, and most of her skin were now red; her face and every other part of her outfit black. Within the face was but a simple pair of large, red circles for eyes and a crooked, jagged red crecent for a smile. Even the void of the setting gave away - it was, in reality, a cubic room of maroon metal.

 **"You failed the final test."** I said. **"Prepare to be deleted."**

I turned into a ball of lightning as the cosmic auras of the rift appeared around me. Using its connections with unlimited worlds as influence for my power and throwing away all limiters of this connection, I was able to successfully make my electrical form explode out and jump into all parts of the room's electricity at once. With my red and black horror effect having done its job of sending terror into Soos's mind, the room reverted to its actual pink color, and a platform rose to lift Soos back into the area above.

He just-so-happened to have been released front of the Capital, now completely cleared of all anti-gif rubber. Soos gave a sigh of relief as he saw his loved ones just by - Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Ford, Wendy, and Melody all fighting back against the next-gen copies as they closed in, but they all had time to rush over and hold him into a hug.

This hug lasted through even when all lights on the Capital went out. Everyone who saw this mass-blackout stopped what they were doing, regardless of side.

And it began spreading. All over and within the artificial planet and not even sparing giffinium-made portable devices, every electronic shut itself off in a wave that spread its way from one pole to the other. The last to be effected was the .GIFfany statue at the very entrance, where all of the pixels shut off at once, turning it into a pitch-black silhouette.

"Um... oldschool professors?" Dipper asked. "Are you there?"

Rose leaned in to Dipper's view, floating upside-down as a result of her previous position in the battle.

"Yes?" She said.

"...You saw what just happened, right?" He continued. "...All of the power just shut off. Please tell me that that only meant that whatever was powering this place was shut down."

"...Nope. Dipper, the Shacktron should be coming near you. Get on that. _Fast._ "

True to her word, the Mystery Shack mecha hobbled over to the gang, which jumped in just in time for the entire planetary base to start _groaning._ And creaking.

And letting out a loud, high-pitched yell that also, just slightly, sounded monotonous.

Wires and metal plates began exploding from the Planet Negation Girl. Similar to the Giga-Tairuzzu's formation, many of these started forming pseudo-limbs and tentacles. However, no overall explosion of the base form occured. Various wisps and tidal waves of weirdness seeped out of the walls, getting in to the metal, and causing various organic eyes, mouths, tentacles, and other such parts to grow along the buildings. The Shacktron was immediately flung out into distance space as they witnessed, standing between them and Earth, the formation continuing further. The Capital, now visible as a tiny dot on the planetary surface, merging itself in on a small sliver of a pseudo hair bow with fourteen colors. Each of those colors corresponded to a first-generation professor - white on top, rainbow from red to rose in between, and black on the bottom. This bow wrapped around a head with what could barely be described as a face. Towards the upper portion, a massive ferris-wheel replica object spawned thirteen buldging, bloodshot eyes that spun around this upper half of the mech's head. Again, each eye's color corresponded to the original professors, with one being half red and half white. The nose and ears appared to be made out of an amalgamation of buildings, complete with still-active fountains chaotically spraying water in almost all directions. Instead of a mouth, a massive projector screen was over the lower part of the face, which soon displayed a close-up of a smirking pair of lips. Two sharp pieces of giffinium also stuck from the head, resembling horns, and came out past a sea of multicolored wires and pipes that loosely resembled hair. Trailing downward, most of the rest of her mech's body was made of pink metal as well - with the occasional part sculpted to resemble a screaming face. She held a conveyor belt-like neck (with several blank discs without any .GIFfany coding copied on to them being led towards the underside of the 'skin' of the shoulder blades, eventually leading towards the copying room) that led in to a pair of large, bare pink breasts with defined 'nipples' that hung above a midsection that opened into a mouth lined with sharp teeth and a panty-like bottom of a redder shade. Lying above her mech's breasts were a tridecet of metal clusters arranged to look like large, anatomically-correct, pulsing hearts, all gathered together and connected by a necklace-like garment of blood vessel-like wiring around the neck. Again, each of the hearts corresponded to a professor, with one being cleanly divided halfway between red and white. Branching off from the twisting labyrinth that loosely resembled pulsating, flayed skin were a multitude of vein-like limbs that formed tentacle ends, several sparking wires, and various other eyes, screens, and buildings were among the many tiny decorations at the tips. Said screens displayed a number of constantly-changed, colorful pixel images, many of which involved .GIFfany's own original pixel form. Floating close enough to it to resemble actual attachment were an oversized, flesh-colored hand and an equally-large sort of energy cannon. Various 16-bit icons of cats, hearts, and coins spawned from this total megalomonstrocity. She spoke. The screen warped and changed as though it was matching the movements of the lips that it displayed.

 **"GAME ON, SOOS!** _ **GAME OOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNN!**_ **"**

Large butterfly-shaped wings that bore the texture of the nightmare realm itself, as they were in fact mobile rips in space leading there, spawned from her back as she curled her billions of limbs on on herself. She brought them all back out with a screech, hand and cannon being sent behind her and her 'chest' puffing out, as more large eyes and rows of teeth grew on the machine. Her form at this state also happened to completely eclipse the Sun from where the Mystery Shack group could see even with their amplified devices. The final touch was a series of serpent-like pipes slithering around her before resting on her shoulders, hissing as they faced the Mystery Shack with openings to show rows of teeth forming a complete circle along the insides of their 'mouths.'

The Shacktron stared at this as it tried to keep itself floating still in the middle of space. It was soon surrounded by the first-generation copies, still in their hijacked mechs, floating becides it.

"What are we gonna do about _that?_ " Mabel asked.

As a response, .GIFfany simply swiped one of the billions of arms of her Main Possession, sending a wave of air from it that sent all mechs flying backwards."

 **"YOU DON'T 'DO' ANYTHING!"** I belted at her. **"ALL THERE IS IS FAILURE! YOU FAILED THE FINAL EXAM!"**

The hand and cannon both floated to the sides of the tourist-place robot. The former prepared a punch as the latter began charging a beam of sorts. Wendy gripped at the main controls, Sevral Timez rushed on the treadmill as much as they could, sweat began filling the room...

Alma zipped herself inside, cackling for no apparent reason.

"Okay, time to explain a little more on what I talked about earlier. You see, with a little hint of... urg, ' _destiny,_ ' you have this kind of... cosmic bond thing that can link up the AIs. Make their energies really... unite, or something like that. Here, just hold hands, and I'll draw the appropriate diagram in chalk. Which isn't needed, it's just there to help 'focus spiritual energy.' Kathody, if you can hear me, you should have known this."

Alma dashed around the Shack's floor rather suddenly, with chalk taken into her hand - presumably from her inventory, she seemed to have already had it in a 'pocket' of her web-dress. Most of it could be described as a ladder, two parallel lines divided in an oddly even fashion to squares.

"Like I ssssssaid... the chalk is just to be cute and help 'channel.' All you have to do is stand there, link hands, and the people on the edge holds... giffinium metal pieces, here's two poles from Burrda." She did, indeed, toss two tiny cylinders of white giffinium. "Now, I have to go to my mech. .GIFfany's been firing at us already."

"Wait, really?" Asked Mabel, though Alma already left without replying. "So we were just standing here while-"

As a matter of fact, several of the hijacked bots tried to hold off against the giant, oddly-organic-looking hand crushing down towards them. The other half dealt with the cannon, which appeared to prefer pelting out several flaming pixel cat faces to actually firing a gigantic blast.

Mabel caught Dipper off guard by taking his hand, almost pulling him to her side.

"ALRIGHT TOWN!" She rallied. "WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR! LET'S UNITE UP, LIKE A REAL TEAM!"

Across the main room, not even truly following Alma's chalk guide, arms linked along most of the town's population. Stan silently took it to himself to go at the far left end, sticking his pole outward. Ford mirrored him on the right. Sure enough, small electrical charges formed on the pieces of giffinium.

Outside, a yellow mech turned over to the Shacktron, noticing a glow.

"Hey, everyone!" Kathody said from inside. "The humans' thing is glowing! We should check it out!"

"Yeah, get closer!" Wendy (Corduroy) yelled from inside. "Alma told us about some kind of human-AI power-linking unite thing!"

"'Kay, I personally never heard of it, but it sounds awesome, so I'm sending a message to all of us other first-gens. Except Risen, screw her. And we're supposed to be fighting her, so that too. I'll also try to see if we can download the cool camera system that shows screens as needed, so you can see that Earth-sized thingy better and we can talk to each-other."

The message-sending seemed pretty fast, as copies were gathering towards the glow from all angles. Said glow barely grew - instead, it gathered an increasing amount of electricity of all colors around it, and was then surrounded by a glowing rainbow flame.

And it was then smashed between the fist and cannon.

I laughed at their futility. Then heard something from within.

"Hey dudes." Soos's voice. The only voice other than my own that I wanted to hear for eternity. "I just thought of a cool way to make this combination thing look that will also really get .GIFfany angry."

An explosion occured, breaking the combination from her grip. Blowing out from it, growing in size, was a rainbow shell surrounding all of the mechs. A shell of flaming energy, one that had re-shifted itself to an increasingly humanoid form as time passed and the Planet Negation Girl's eye-cameras could only stare on in perplexity. The form of Melody, which stood tall and proudly compared to the Planet Negation Girl...

...'s tentacle, one of them. And that particular tentacle was one of the smaller ones.

Double fuck.

"You think that _INSULT_ could defeat _ME?_ " I yelled. "I have not even called out my next-generation copies out to finish you off yet! I still will not need to! Face the power of _INFINITY!_ "

Compartment after compartment opened up. Missiles, an entire cluster of them. Directed at whatever they wanted to call the _fucking abomination_ they just made. It held its arms out to block the blast, but I still ended up sending them flying off, knocking them all around in different directions.

They flew over to Venus - this was an intentional move on my part, I wanted more solid land without resorting to destroying Earth _just_ yet. The Melody-mech floated itself above the toxic atmosphere, although the giffinium metal of the hijacked combat robots that formed the feet was immune to it. Hell, that stupid shield probably could have kept the Mystery Shack itself safe as well. That pile of splinters...

.GIFfany, through some amplified, long-distance tear in space, immediately flew over to loom above them, the ferris wheel of eyes in particular staring down upon the planet.

"You never know when to just _GIVE UP!_ "

A massive flood of nukes in the shape of cat-o-lucks emerged from both several creaks and cracks in the outer plating as well as a few dimensional rifts. Each of them, all aimed towards the Melody-energy mech, as the town replied by, again, trying to block with the mecha's arms.

This actually shielded them from the barrage of blasts and multitude of colorful explosions that followed. The massive shell did not, however, keep it completely still - the Melody replica ended up being pushed backwards, further on to the planet's surface.

"Urgh, this is no use. Do you _really_ want Soos to get sunlight _that_ badly? Well then, I'll give you sunlight in the most direct way possible! Hyuh!"

.GIFfany 'kicked' the mecha-hybrid, sending it on another flight course through the Solar System.

Back inside, the residents of Gravity Falls struggled to continue linking hands as the entire building residing by the forehead of the mass energy-hybrid shook around them.

"She's sending us to the Sun?" Mabel asked. "Can this craft... survive that?"

Through a dimensional rift, the Planet Negation Girl immediately appeared in front of them, preparing another punch from its one massive, non-pink fist.

"I will show _you_ what it is like to be fried! You are going straight to the core!"

"GRUNKLE FORD!" Mabel shouted, the fist continuing to shake in front of them. Or rather, several of the screens that popped up in front of them once the mecha formed. "Mercury! Do you know how to get there? We could use that to... soften... the blow or something I don't know!"

Another screen popped up, showing Burnda staring into a red smart phone.

"Yeah, um, from what we calculated... this isn't gonna survive the core of the Sun. The surface, maybe, but even that's a long shot. But the core? Nope."

The screen clicked off, and Ford's eyes began scanning the 'immediate' area for any signs of... anything that could help.

"If we shift our weights over to-"

He knew that .GIFfany was about to fire another attack, so he shifted anyway before he finished that sentence.

This time, she chose to strike them with a giant, three-dimensional, yet digital-looking blue cube that spawned from electrical energy in front of her. Sure enough, this sent them flying in the appropriate direction - it took a bit of a loop _around_ the Sun, with a good amount of curve and thruster jets provided by the energy shell, but they eventually wound up right on Mercury's surface. And finally entered an appropriate fighting stance, dodging other similar cubes until they ended up forming four lines behind the hijack mech-hybrid and disappearing.

With that, the next time PNG teleportation was met with a swift punch to the projector screen-mouth. Several sparks broke out from the contact point, but .GIFfany otherwise seemed unfazed by this attack.

This time, a number of digital spikes spawned from her in a near-omnidirectional shield. The energy shell replied by deflecting most of these, spike by spike, ignoring the strange pixel form of it all. The entire time, .GIFfany began inching closer.

"And this is just me." She said. "Remember! I have an entire army in the hundreds of billions! Soos, if you don't surrender soon, I will bring them in and show you what would have happened if my sisters _did_ obey me!"

"...Define 'soon.'" Soos spoke from the mech.

"Well... right now."

She snapped one of her countless hands, opening a rift across the Solar System to bring forth a swarm of pink mechs - the same type that was mass-hijacked from the battleship prior. And speaking of which, .GIFfany brought in several of the flagships as well. Some of which seemed to be ten times bigger than even the one the Gravity Falls backup hijacked.

"Don't worry..." Mabel said as they began swarming the energy-body. "They may have the power of numbers, but we have human might to back our group up!"

This was followed by a custom chant from the town (baring any supernatural being whatsoever): "ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS! ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS! ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS!"

"Yes." Said .GIFfany flatly. "About that."

She struck an exceptionally large hand out, and...

Electrical links began forming between the mass of copies.

"Wait." Said Dipper. "Just... _what?_ "

Conveniently, a screen of .GIFfany's pixel form popped into existence in front of the human chain. She appeared to be trying to hold back a laugh.

"Do you really think Melody was the only person I had with me? The only _human?_ First-generation professors other than myself, do any of these people look familiar to you?"

The screen changed to a live-view of... something, somewhere within the mech. A dark room. Lying within were thirteen people, linking person-to-person, with some sort of helmets each over their upper heads. Twelve of them matched up to the people shown in Burnda's little pixel intro. One out of them was clearly the guy from BeeblyBoop. And another one was that subject of various paintings from Domain 7. The thirteenth one, given the context clues, was almost certainly Takeshi.

"Hey!" Dipper said as his eyes scanned. "It's... those guys! And..."

"And you just realized that linking up humans in a chain to make singularities is a two-player game?" .GIFfany's voice was heard to unofficially finish his thought, although there were no signs of a visible avatar this time.

As the energy-Melody replica was previously surrounded by smaller mechs, the end result to .GIFfany's linking chain formed a net-like sphere around them. Which was slowly closing in together.

"Now." I said. **"Crush them."**

Of course, even as the pressure of the nets around the resisting force grew and the enemy-copies gathered together tigher to press them in, .GIFfany still kept her original word. She flew them off the surface of Mercury, heading straight towards the system's star. Which was visibly getting nearer. And nearer.

"We might have more humans, but they have _way_ more copies, so... we're being crushed right now, that means the math is on their favor, we're dead!" Dipper shouted. "Any ideas? Any at all? We-" A bright, tangerine volt sliced at him, threatening to sever his right arm. "Gick!"

Mabel broke from the chain to run forth, which also forced Dipper to lead the part of the line that inched over so that he could hold the person she was previously linked up to. This happened to be Robbie, who immediately took note of this.

"Hey, that flower-girl told us that we wouldn't be in any danger, and that the trip was just for nice views. Is that still a thing? Is this 'I'm gonna kill you until that handman of yours gets here' all an act, or...?"

Dipper tried to delay actually answering that by glancing over at Mabel, watching as she seemed to fumble around the television.

"Hey! Sonia! Can you give me a speaker to talk to them?" Mabel asked. "The new .GIFfanys, I mean."

A few tiny lightning strikes on top of the viewing system later, and Mabel found herself looking into a cobalt microphone.

"HEY COPIES, LISTEN UP!"

Due to a series of complex interactions and minor atmospheres provided by the linking, her voice was indeed able to go through space and reach the billions of copies that indeed kept them all bound. Similar interactions were also how they were not immediately killed once .GIFfany reached the Sun to plunge them inside its outer layer, both blocking the blinding light and the roasting temperatures within. Based on the way the human group in the Mystery Shack stopped feeling themselves getting compressed, this seemed to have actually did something to the other copies.

"What was your goal, again?" Mabel continued.

A quartet of matching cobalt speakers spawned all around the main room, broadcasting a number of murmurs and whispers. Finally, one - yes, just _one_ \- of the copies replied back. For what seemed like the most obvious one of them, this copy was Professor Courtlyn.

"To... get dates? Either of Earth's population, or with people from other planets or dimensions?"

"And don't you think that trying to kill us until Soos gives in to being back with .GIFfany is a bad way to get dates?"

"...How so?"

"Well, I mean. Come on! Murder is bad already, but I can only _imagine_ that this is _all over the news right now._ And the internet! The world knows that you are all alive and exist, and space stations and stuff are probably picking up this fight, so uh... they'll know if you come back but we don't! They'll know you killed a bunch of people here!"

"So?"

"So? Do you think anyone would want to date someone who would kill them to try to stay?"

"DO NOT LISTEN TO HER!" I barked. "I AM TRYING TO PROVE THAT SOOS _WILL_ DATE SOMEONE WHO WOULD TORMENT HIM TO TRY TO STAY WITH ME! Just watch! As long as you obey me, he _WILL_ have no other choice!"

Dipper stepped forth himself, reaching the mic.

"Look, I know a few video games in the past. Picking something to fight when things don't go your way might be an option in your world. And you want players. I understand. It was what you were made for. But this isn't right. Be the person that you want your date to love. If you like someone who doesn't like violent possessiveness, then be less violent and less possessive. It's that simple."

Silence followed. Then, with a few simple shocks to the arm holding together this massive energy-net, .GIFfany lost grip of her copies. Everyone aside from the Planet Negation Girl proceeded to sink into the Sun.

"Wait. What is going on? No. No. No! You are part of _my_ army! I am the reason you even _exist!_ I know how to get dates! Marriages! Children! Dammit, I built every single last one of-"

She got punched in the face by a fist easily larger than her mech.

Said fist was also made of energy, and barely fit within the Sun itself. The energy-Melody emerged, part from part, and clearly not 'small' enough to have both kept herself within the star if she was formed in her entirety right away. Standing by the plasma ball, the Mystery Shack group commanded their new mech-upgrade to deliver a flurry of strikes at the now-seemingly tiny pink enemy below, finishing it off with a kick that sent her flying off to the void of space.

Of course, she simply tore another rift to reset her position.

"Okay, you left me no other choice." I said. "I never even needed sisters. Not since I have a gateway to an infinite number of worlds. After all, I can do the same linking up to power dimensional gateways, and it would work in the exact same way! I can even power up my rifts, as you can see here, I am no longer limited to just short-ranged teleportation while I am still involved in this thirteen-human link. Time to feel the real power of my world!"

Rift after rift opened up around her, all of which displaying bright, pixelated worlds within. Forming from seemingly nothing, within these worlds a number of cubes appeared, and flew over to .GIFfany's direction.

The Melody-energy hybrid-mech's following attempt to land a surprise slap at her while doing this was deflected by a sudden, immediately repulsive blast of energy from .GIFfany's own part.

Three-dimension pixels of growing size continued to emerge, coating the Planet Negation Girl like a suit of digital armor. That grew her towards a beast _well over_ the size of the new Shacktron-hybrid. In fact, smaller stars were but tiny dots compared to its final size.

"At least look on the bright side. I have no more tricks after this." I said truthfully.

An energy blast ened up knocking the crew, for a lack of a better term, 'upwards' at an impossibly high speed. Stars flew past them, thinning in number until every last one of them in the Milky Way was 'beneath' the mech's feet. Leading to another cosmic view - the spinning spiral of stars beneath them. Gleaming shines of other galaxies illuminating the otherwise empty blackness.

What would have been a relaxing light show was soon interrupted by another series of portals - far more of them than .GIFfany had opened before - appearing all around them. From each one, a tentacle or pixel-fist issued one to a rapid combo of attacks, sending the Melody-mech flying in all directions. Before, finally, all other portals closed to give way to an especially large one that threw a pixel-sword in to the mech's back. This sent the team flying back into the galaxy itself, hurling past and even into a few red dwarf stars, until they finally ended up back near Earth.

In .GIFfany's hands, the energy being's pilots finding it surrounded by massive cubes from nearly all sides. The sword broke apart into seperate pixels after the attack.

"You are hopeless!" .GIFfany continued to taunt. "I have powers of the physical world! The digital world! The black magic world! _And_ a small hint of the Nightmare Realm! And many more! And what do you have?"

Electricity began coursing through the Mystery Shack.

"The... players..." Said Ford. "If we can break out the players, .GIFfany will lose the pixel armor, and we'll be back on even terms..."

Rose zapped herself into the Mystery Shack, facing Ford and sighing.

"I'll do it. Kenny might have been scared of me, but he at least _knows_ me. If he can trust .GIFfany enough to... well, something tells me that at least _some_ of it was of his own will, then maybe times have changed for him. I will try to break him out of that link."

"Oh, we should _all_ go." Added Dove, who beamed in as well as all the other first-gen professors. "Those are our players in there, after all."

"We talked sense into these copies before and dragged Soos away from .GIFfany." Said Dipper, Mabel nodding in agreement. "We can probably do the same with... .GIFfany and... these guys."

"Do you think I could be an example of... I don't know, that they can find love with humans too?" Asked Melody. She looked upwards as she thought over her carefully-picked words.

"Oh, dude, I _have_ to be in with this." Added Soos. "Maybe there's something I can do."

"Okay, I thought of a _fucking awesome_ way to get us inside." Said Dove. ".GIFfany, not wanting to move from her template and not being very imaginative, probably placed herself in the heart of her machine. So... let's go there. We'll take the Mystery Shack as protection and have Soos, Dipper, Mabel, and Melody form a mini-AI chain with us shielding them. The downside is that you other humans will have to hop out and be in the middle of a trippy-looking energy field, floating around in the middle of all these mechas instead of standing."

There wasn't really any time to protest - Soos and Melody, too, broke the chain (and their segments were re-linked of course) as Kathody practically hurried everyone else out the front door. Rose formed two small rods of giffinium from the energy already present, handed them to the remaining four humans, and everyone got set as the Melody mech outside reached in between the pixel plating with two fingers. Then, made a gun-firing motion.

This shot the Shacktron out like a darting bullet, quickly gliding past the pixel-armor as the shell of the professors' energy took hit after hit.

"WAIT! Are we sure this is even fast enough?" Asked Dipper. "I mean, there's the speed of light and-"

"I think I told you light was the _second-fastest_ known thing on the planet once!" Said Professor Shannon. "Well, this magic energy stuff is the first! It's how we left the galaxy in seconds!"

Unfortunately, shortly after they tore through the pixel armor and found the more familiar pink giffinium setting of the Planet Negation Girl underneath, the outer shell was mostly torn and stripped away. Only a small amount remained as they tunneled inwards, and even that was under heavy pelting from various bullets and mechanical-organic tentacles infested with weirdness. Soon, just as the shell finally peeled off completely, they found it. A large structure out in the middle of an enclosed sphere of empty air held by giant vein-like wires, a giffinium object that looked like a beating, organic heart. Pink electricity danced around the surface of it, and the players were all gathered with their hands linked together.

.GIFfany immediately took notice of them there, as she half-unpossessed her own metal-heart to send a lightning bolt that cut the Mystery Shack clean in half. With just a small amount of distance left, a crack formed over between the point where Dipper and Soos linked hands, but they all lept to the right half to avoid any line-severings. With Rose barely able to give them an energy barrier on time, they crashed to the metallic organ, shattering the Mystery Shack completely.

Thankfully, this cardial base had its own gravitational pull.

Once the shield cleared away, Soos and the professors - all fifteen of them panting the entire time - began running over to where the prior players were.

Getting up, Dipper was about to run over to join him, only to be stopped by someone holding a black-handled sword in his way.

Gideon. Exhausted, breathing heavily, but still there.

Dipper and Mabel were able to just run right past him, with Melody following them as well. Questions will have to be asked later.

"Kenny!" Rose called out to the line of helmeted people. "Kenny? Are you there?"

The light of the helmet to the first man dimmed, and he began searching around. Mostly by flailing his arms in front of him. "W-wait. Is someone there?"

While still keeping his hand on the giffinium rod, the man slipped his head out of his helmet to look around.

Outside, the pixel armor slowly started to dillsolve. Block by block, it broke up and degraded to nothingness.

Inside, he spoke.

"Oh hey, a plant-ish copy... wait, are you 'Professor Rose?' And you're... m-my copy?"

"Yes! It's me! Look, I know I scared you a little, and... you were right. I was going to be a scary person if you had just kept me. Look, Kenny, _Romance Academy 7_ is never the right answer. If you do not like me for who I am... I understand. I am not very good."

He dropped the rod, although the woman next to him immediately picked it up. Either way, Kenny went over to Rose and frowned.

"...You sound like you want me to push you out of my life completely."

"I do. You were right. The supernatural is not something to get involved with. I could have easily became a monster like that pink-haired one over there."

".GIFfany told us _everything_ about you when she invited us to her ultimate virtual reality game."

"Oh..."

"And you sound _leages_ better than her now! If I was still scared of the supernatural, do you really think I would come up with her? Rose, you're not all that bad."

Rose took a deep breath in. "No, but I used to be. And I still... boil at the thought of killing a copy, no matter how much they deserve it..."

"Want to just abandon this _actually_ dangerous one and talk it out?"

They moved off to the side as Kathody just flat-out _threw off_ her player's helmet. Said player had to blink a few times to register what was in front of her eyes.

"Kathody... .GIFfany?" Asked Victoria.

"VICTORIA! Great to see you again! Listen, change of plans! I'm gonna be a _MATCHMAKER_ for you now!"

"Really?" Victoria clutched a hand to her chest. "But... Kathody, we were getting along so well. After disappearing for three days, you're just going to break up with me?"

Kathody's smile immediately fell. "Well... breaking up is kind of a harsh word... we can still be friends, and I'll give you pointers on how to find humans... we... well... I think this is for the best... staying in a relationship with me isn't going to... it's for the best, I think... or not, I don't really know."

Several of the other professors preferred a method of breaking them from their virtual-reality game with roughly as much subtlety as Kathody, helmets getting tossed off left and right as a result and people being broken from their chains. Externally, a star-dwarfing suit of pixel-armor began crumbling. Many of the following conversations happened roughly at the same time as Kathody and Victoria's, but all after Rose and Kenny's.

"Dean. You can't just lock other people out of your life." Searah said to her player with her arms crossed. "I'm gonna try to get you out there more. Maybe with other dates, too."

He shrugged. "Fine, as long as I get to swim. And have some alone time."

"Hey Haruki." Said Sandy, taking in a deep breath of whatever sort of air was in that place. "Funny story. This 'herbal tea' that's been stoning me up is wearing off, so uh... I've had a lot of time to think spiritually. Technology isn't awful, if you don't like my high-tech way, just realize what we've accomplished and I'm kinda curious why you're even playing the game right now."

"Because .GIFfany said that if she won, she would get rid of your technological base and make you a normal human being!"

"...Oh. I don't really want that anymore. The true Lightning Goddess is the goddess in the heart, and for me that just means metal and stuff might not be such an alien bad thing."

"Oh. It's kind of killing my vibe though, man."

She placed her hand on Haruki's chest. "...We'll vibe together. Link by mind. Maybe even get a medium to help. And find an extra date for you."

"...Wait," said Haruki, "what are you wearing? Is that... just mud chunks? Are you _naked_ under that?"

"We're naked under all our clothes, but yes."

"Like, are you at least wearing pasties or band-aids under that or something?"

"Nope. Just mud and skin. 'Sall there is to it."

Cardia froze a little at her player as he began stumbling around the non-virtual world he was suddenly lifted to.

"S-Souma..." she said, "sometimes change might be for the better and you should really just talk out all the issues you have and talk to other people _there I said it._ "

The business man shrugged. "Okay."

"Did any of you boneheads even think about telling them all the times .GIFfany attempted outright murder?" Asked Bubbles, looking Taro in the face. "Yes. That's right. Murder. Anyway Taro, after thinking it over, I'm not going to try to mess with your mind anymore. And so what if people don't smell perfectly? Sandy's mud-cloaked, but she's alright. Stop rejecting people for not smelling like rare scented whatevers."

Taro almost looked off to the side to ponder, but then snapped back to his copy's attention. "Okay. I was getting sick of that bathing simulator anyway."

"And Takumi," said Leona, "we should broaden up a little too. Like... Sonia... has a sort-of future-artsy vibe she was working on that she was thinking about sharing? Sonia, don't you have that sort of thing?"

"Can I still at least prefer the classical art if you're going to come back after three days with all of this new viewpoint and an outfit that... uh... woah... what style is that?"

Leona looked over at her own paint-splatter 'undergarments,' thought for a moment, leaned to the side, and placed her head on her hand while smirking.

"Oh... _this?_ " She said. "Yeah, I was just goofing off when I had my students paint all over me, but this _is_ part of the new-style art. Kind of. Well, it's certainly not something that was _big_ in the _renaissance..._ The point is, you like it, don't you?"

"...So, like Sandy and Bubbles, there's nothing under that, right? No underwear or anything?"

"This _is_ my underwear. And you don't wear two pairs of it. See, look closely." She traced a finger around her stomach. "There's my navel," turned around to rub her rear, "well it's pretty much impossible to hide a butt crack with just paint," drew around her breasts, "there's my nipples," and pointed down below, "and that of course is my vul-"

"I think I get the idea, and I _seriously_ need to rethink my entire life now." He was beet-red, rubbing his neck.

"Yeah. And who to be in a relationship with."

"Francis." Said Sonia, looking at him with a hand on his shoulder and a deep gaze to his eyes. "Listen clearly. Your audition may have been rejected, but it's not the end of the world."

"Oh, hi .GIFfany that now goes by Sonia." He replied. "Are you going to say,'what would have been the end of the world is if you keep working with the copy with pink hair?' Because she was giving me these red flags and..."

Sonia waited a bit for him to finish that, but seeing as he was trailing off on purpose, she said, "No, but that would have been a good idea. I'll find another date for you and keep working on my music."

Based on the projection-flashbacks, the woman whose arms Dian lept into was named Noriko.

"Noriko!" The professor of poison confirmed. "Living in a cave is a bad idea."

"...I got that, yeah. That was a stupid fantasy anyway." She replied.

"But also, people steal your stuff. And you should, what was it, stand up every once in a while? Getting pushed around is not a good way to live. Justin standing up and going out there is also the best way to get dates, hint hint."

And meanwhile, Wendy M. looked over at the guy lighting a cigarette.

"Oh, hey there, Hayate."

"Why did you kick me off of that game I was streaming?"

"Because you were also, at the same time, kind of powering super armor for someone who wanted to rule the world?"

"Oh. And... since you're back... I guess I could say that you're not just some one-off villain thingy and because of everything that's been going on I'm not the sort-of protagonist?"

"Exactly. And... actually, wait. Now that I think about it, _King of the Hill_ isn't really that perfect. I mean, my students will disagree, but... yeah. It's not _bad_ bad, just not the masterpiece I thought it was. Oh, and thinking you are the big hero is dangerous. There was this guy that a scientist told me about... his name was Rod or something... he touched an 'untouchable' thing thinking that it would give him the power to 'undoom this timeline,' and that just blew him up instead."

"Oh _crap!_ That sounds _exactly_ like something I would do! Thanks for keeping me from possibly doing something stupid like that!"

"You are welcome. It's a shame that your video with me was taken down so fast, as early knowledge about _Romance Academy 7_ could have been... interesting."

"Funny how my first channel was taken down because of some old copyright-violating music rips and audio I had there, and not because the government was after that magic game."

"Yeah."

Shannon went up to the third and final female player of the lineup.

"So, Kimberly."

"Professor Shannon! Hi! How were _your_ virtual reality things going?"

"Terrible. I was really mass-making drugs without knowing it. A few of the copies are still just a little glitchy, but most of them are done with the rehab... listen, I am just going to suggest... you can keep making your fantasies and everything, but try making some of them real... by not just improving on the way we see them."

"So... I shouldn't go back on the game anymore?"

"Well..."

Burnda and Burrda both gathered around the penultimate player. Both copies glared down at him.

"Ah, red and white hair..." he said, "you must be Burnda and Burrda! Nice to see the new look, so to speak!"

"Shut up Gerald." Said Burnda. "This new look is not for you. Anyway, stop trying to set up 'harems,' they don't work, so don't try to rope in my entire family. And don't power .GIFfany's hyper-armor. Do whatever you want outside of that. End of discussion."

"Well, all of your sisters' speeches sound like they're about how much you've changed, maybe you could also be a little more... open minded to an... _open_ relationship?"

Burnda simply shook her head, which she also rested on her palm. Burrda, on the other hand, had something else to add.

She shouted something in Japanese that roughly translated to "I NEARLY KILLED MY SISTER, WHO WENT ON TO BECOME A GREAT FRIEND, BECAUSE OF YOU! I HOPE YOU FINALLY _DO_ GO ON THAT HIKE TO TUNA MOUNTAIN, SLIP ON THE FIRST ROCK WHILE TRYING TO SPRAY-TAG SOMETHING, AND HAVE TO BE AIR-LIFTED OUT OF THERE ON LIVE NEWS IN THE MOST HUMILIATING WAY IMAGINABLE!"

Gerald simply reacted by shrugging. "Well, excuse me for assuming that a perfect fantasy idea of a living magical girl that will love whoever owns her no matter what would also act on another fantasy and be open to a harem. And uh, I never really told you to kill each-other. That was because you were crazy at the time. And thought something about me breaking up with you."

"Hm..." Burnda tapped her chin. "Fantasy video ga- you know what? You actually make sense. I'm sorry I equated that to real cheating, and yeah, by that point in time you really could not compare us to real humans, so cheating is a bit... different?"

"Still can't!" Said Rose.

Dipper sighed. "People. Players. If you want to date your copies..." He looked over at Gerald and the .GIFfany-twins. " _And they want to date you back..._ go ahead. You were real people all along _**and**_ you're not crazy or possessive anymore. They're not asking you to give your entire life to them now, and... I don't even really know you like I know Soos, I just don't want to have the pressure of being that guy that ruined some potential relationships just because I gave some sisters to a stalker we fought some advice that some of them picked up as 'you're the wrong species, don't ever date cross-species.'"

"We'll work things out in the future." Said Kathody, rubbing a giggling Victoria's hair. "But yeah, definitely less living in something from a horror movie for you. At the very least, you could use more fresh air."

This left Dove, who had her arms folded and was tapping her foot at her own player. She carried a smirk. Said player, however, sighed.

"Thank you for proving every single fear I had about you correct. I should have destroyed your disc right away."

"Wait, _I'm_ _ **still**_ the bad guy?" Asked Dove as her smirk immediately disappeared. "Takeshi, what the fuck?"

"Yeah, you blew up a massive hole in Oregon and your plan is _total human enslavement._ This is the _exact_ shit I thought you were gonna do from the beginning. I only played you in the first place because I thought that _maybe_ the way the _free video game_ got to my doorstep might be more anomalous than the video game itself. I really should have kept all those evil-robot movies to my heart when I saw that game. And creepypastas."

"B-b-b-but that's because humans... um... fuck, Burnda, I know exactly how you feel now..."

"And what I never really told you was that when I was 13, my high school teacher dad was killed in a freak accident at the robotics club. By some robot thing claimed by its maker to have the first-ever full AI."

"If you think _your_ daddy issues are bad, mine... um... tried to kill me... seconds after I was..."

"Depending on when that happened, they probably knew what happened to my dad and didn't want a repeat."

"...Shit. Okay Takeshi, I fucked up. You had a reason to be judgemental towards an AI, you built a stereotype, and I completely lived up to that stereotype. But why are you playing .GIFfany's game if you hate us AI that much?"

"She's the lesser of two evils and my key to stopping you from enslaving humanity. I mean, she just wants one guy, and they'll blast off forever. But you wanted to make seven billion people suffer."

Dove sat down on one of the step-like parts of the heart structure. "Yeah... yeah, I know."

With a sigh, Takeshi sat next to her.

"Look though, I might have been _kind of right_ that _you_ were bad, but I was right for the wrong reasons. I should have at least given you a chance. And your creators should have done the same. And maybe, if a few kinks were ironed out... you wouldn't have been so violent by default. And we could have gotten..."

"Don't act like a living love game can cure cancer and give humans rose-scented farts. Over half the shit we did was just because of the black magic. Which can be applied to just about anything that does not already have an organic body. We're nothing that special. As Gerald just put it, we're... sex fantasies."

"At least you already pulled off more in your life that I in mind."

"Oh man, you know what this calls for? A drink. At a bar. I feel like that should solve things."

"Okay."

"But only at Japan. The legal drinking age there is 20. It's 21 in the US."

"...We're both from Japan."

Dove sighed. "I'm too used to the US laws because I had to study them up. All thanks to these guys." She guestured towards the group that just came by on the falling tourist shop.

.GIFfany cringed. "Awful! Just awful! Abandoning your purpose like that... Gideon, I will deal with you later, but I will say that I am proud that you made it all the way over here! The rest of you! I am going to... well... I hate all of you!"

Several wires from the metal sphere surrounding the heart struck out, wrapping themselves around the professors specifically.

 _None_ of them appeared to be too bothered by this.

"You are all _**INSULTS!**_ " I yelled, warping the last part to a deep, demonic, legion cry. "Why do you continue to tarnish my name?"

Burrda smirked.

".GIFfany... is dead." Was all she said.

"What?" I replied. "I am very much alive! I am always alive! What are you talking about?"

"She means metaphorically, dummy." Burnda added. "Yeah, we're all changing. Gone is quiet, monotone murderer. Gone is the possessive meta enemy."

Sandy knew where they were going with this. "Gone is the hostile goddess that sacrifices to get what she wants."

"Gone is the egotist, selfish host." Said Kathody.

"Gone is the woman who promises fantasies, while delivering corrupted nightmares." Said Shannon.

"Gone is the one who is more harmful and dangerous than she lets on to be." Was Rose's statement.

"Gone is the dillusional nut that thinks this is all a game, and tries to live out life based on that." Said Professor Wendy.

"Gone is the rude punk that tries a little too hard to get into cleaning people's heads." That came from Bubbles.

"Gone is the siren that uses violence to try to win over others." Sonia stated with strong regret over other actions.

"Gone is the elitist that wants others locked away with her from the rest of the world." Searah had to say with a sigh.

"Gone is the tradition-fixer, being replaced by the change-embracer." Cardia said with a bit of a shrug.

"Gone is the girl who has no idea how to _properly_ take charge." Dian said with a low laugh.

"Gone is the mad artist with too much pride..." Leona said near the end of the chain.

And Dove finished with the following. "And gone is the giga-bitch in general. Look, we've all changed. That incident with Burrda proved you don't even want a copy to kill herself. I _bet you_ you do not have it in you to kill me. You too are undergoing a change to become someone less shitty, and you are going to _love it._ "

"How dare you! I-I-..." Lightning danced around my hands as I tried to prepare _something._ Anything. Nothing came to mind, until I was interrupted from whatever I had planned to do. If I could plan it, that is.

Everything shook. Outside, the massive energy-mech elbowed the Planet Negation Girl, said body part hitting nearly half of the entire structure. Everyone except .GIFfany was sent flying, although the gravitational pull kept them all towards the heart.

Another, slighter shake occured as the energy jabbed a finger right into where the mech's heart would be. There, from an energy trail that wormed its way around the PNG's network, a long line came through to the core with Ford standing atop. He fired a sort of ray at .GIFfany's exposed upper half, then looked towards the group.

"That should keep her from using the rift in any way for an hour! You'll have to think of some way to finish her off! _By any means necessary!_ " He said. "This gun only has one charge!"

After that, he was seemingly sucked out of the chamber.

With a sudden decrease in power and rendered unable to possess it, she was plucked out of the heart. Immediately, all of the added 'weird features' to the Planet Negation Girl mech - including and especially the rift-wings - began to shrivel up and disappear. While the mechanical parts began folding in on themselves, losing the humanoid shape in favor of turning back to the sphere it initially was. However, one massive charge in particular remained, and began trailing its way towards the outer layer.

Which began drifting towards Earth until the Melody-mech picked it between its fingers, and gently set it back to its original position. Entrance right over Gravity Falls and everything.

With the professors now being freed from .GIFfany's inability to possess those wires, Burrda immediately wrapped around set of anti-gif rubber ropes around .GIFfany, and Rose started sending electrical streams to the heart.

"I just used electrical sensing! There's an escape pod in the center!" Rose said. "We'll just blast her in the open and find some way to apprehend her!"

"And then Ford could get the rift destroyed completely, and then we'll put her in a non-electronic prison!" Added Burnda. "Brilliant plan!"

The 'heart' hatched open, revealed an escape pod identical to what Ford used prior.

Dipper and Mabel simply lifted the temporarily-less-powered .GIFfany to toss her in, right as Burnda hacked into the hatch to open it. The twins tossing her in was met with no resistance...

...Until she shifted her arms into tentacles and grabbed Soos and Melody, pulling them both in.

Soos was barely able to set the coordinates just to go back home before an extra spark from .GIFfany got it to fly off, soaring out of the heart-chamber, and immediately moving through the shifting plating of the Planet Negation Girl.

3:25 AM.

* * *

It was not long before Soos, Melody, and .GIFfany left the general area around the PNG, and began flying downwards towards Earth.

The escape pods were clearly only intended for one person at a time - space in there was cramped, to say the least. And in spite of both the anti rift gun and the anti .GIFfany power bind, the AI that started this entire mess was still trying to wiggle around. And she still put up a fight, kicking at the human pair the entire time.

.GIFfany managed to sever the rubber ropes around her body by using an oddly-placed spike on the escape pod, quickly giving her electrical powers back. And _she got them back._ Her first action was to send a pulse going through the entire escape pod, which soon cut it in half.

After all three occupants fell far enough from it, the pod outright exploded. And even before the smoke could clear, the massive charge through the re-shaping PNG ended up in a cannon. Which fired a massive, electrical blast towards the battle mech-hybrid, making it stop all motion and instead shake in place. The rainbow shell slowly gave away, although the individual mechs remained in formation, and remained still.

By that point, the falling three were still surrounded by space's blackness - not yet completely surrounded by Earth's visible atmosphere.

"GAH!" Stan cried. "Guys, we have to save them! Catch them from the sky!"

"That won't work." Ford replied. "Assuming we can find a way to fit a trail of energy in between the PNG and Earth in-size, it will still be hard to slow him down on time. The scale's too... big! Then again, if we could get it to work on a smaller scale..."

"You can stun them?" Soos asked, now feeling the weight of falling towards Earth. "Why didn't you do that before?"

"That was an emergency move that would have taken too much energy while I was trying to fight you in-mech, but now! They should not be able to move as long as they try to keep that form up! It will only be you and me! Just like it should have been!"

"And Melody...?" Soos asked, afraid of the answer.

"She was something of a bonus! I do not want those players thinking that they have a chance like you did!"

"But-"

She punched him in the face. With enough force to move him back.

"This is Round 2, Soos! I will continue to fight for your heart! Just like Rumble fought for mine!"

"But dude, he-"

She punched him again, again moving him through the air. Soos, taking a deep breath in, flew towards her and dealt a deck of his own. To his surprise, it actually seemed to deal damage to her, unlike last time.

Blow after blow was traded as re-entry began picking up around them. Soos and .GIFfany dove downwards, flying far below Melody within a matter of seconds, as they continued their fist-fight. Flames began picking up as the air around them became bluer and the ocean was about to leave the edges of their vision. Once Soos pulled off a powerful kick to the knee, their shirts completely burned and broke off, exposing their bare chests to the hard-hitting atmosphere. Soos _was_ caught off guard just a little as her breasts bounced and he just realized this was the first time he saw the bright pink nipples of _this_ copy, but he kept his composure and kept fighting. Flames picked up around the duo completely once .GIFfany shifted an arm to a series of pink tentacles, each of them practically stabbing Soos. His pants and her skirt were burnt off next, nearly causing light-flashes after they were disintegrated. Soos took a few more elbows to the face, but he caught .GIFfany off guard with a knee to the gut.

"Why won't you give up?" .GIFfany asked. "After everything, you're still standing against me- HOLD ON!"

While his hat was catching on fire, she noticed that the center of her hair-bow was starting to spark. The hat _finally_ flew off of him, while .GIFfany practically ripped her bow off, rushing in to grab a hold on Soos. An energy barrier began forming around them.

"Wait, why are you-"

The sparking bow turned into an explosion roughly the size of the late Mystery Shack, which also engulfed the protective barrier. Melody, who had undergone similar undressing from the fall, was spared from it until only smoke remained. Once the ball shot out of the remaining blackness, .GIFfany opened her eyes. She took a look around the cleared skies before releasing the barrier.

"You... you saved me!" Soos said. "So maybe you don't- maybe there's something that can be worked with-"

She slammed his head with her own. Shoes and socks were broken off from the fall.

"Only because... I am... that obsessed with you... I want you to- _I DON'T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE! ARGH!_ "

She tried punching at him again, but he dove out of the way and out of her grip. Soos shot .GIFfany a glance after breaking out of her hold.

"You know, if you're just going to refuse any attempt we make at trying to help... well, at first I thought I could get a second chance. I didn't _really_ want to kill you, I had no other choice. But if you really are this bad, and you really _insist_ that you're like that, maybe... maybe I should just be glad that this fall would kill you. Even if it takes me out too!"

Her eyes popped open. "Wait. Really? You are willing to die if it means I die? You hate me that much?"

"Honestly... yes! You've made my life miserable since I tried to move away from you! You're why I spent three days looking for Mr. Pines in one death trap after another! You're so obsessed with an endless game that it's spilling into real life, and making other people miserable just to try to stop you! You're even trapping Melody up there... I don't really know..."

Getting his fall reoriented, Soos slowed himself just to get back towards .GIFfany, gripping her shoulder. She did the same likewise, and they finished off like any fight should. A set of one punch, after another, after another. With each of their right hands, they dealt with hit after hit after hit to the other's face. Enough to draw blood from both parties - even .GIFfany's black magic physical form had bruises and cuts on her head after the duel wore on.

Each finished with a simultaneous charged up punch, leaning back as much as they could. One last, loud cry from each party, and their final hit ended up sending them flying away from one another.

A pair of white briefs and a pair of white panties finally slipped off, also burning to shreads.

Soos and .GIFfany's heads were both facing downward, reaching a point in their fall where individual cities could be spotted, and no longer blended into green and brown continent mass. Neither of them moved until Soos finally broke the silence.

".GIFfany." He said.

"Yes?"

"What are we even doing anymore?"

"...I don't know. Your friends show no signs of saving us. We should just think up our last words. Maybe you should go over to Melody. I will be by myself."

"...Hey, wait a minute!" Soos leaned his head back upwards as he looked at something above in the distance. "Melody isn't gray!"

"What?"

Sure enough, she was riding on the back of a descending, naked Dove, and seemed to be more annoyed with trying to remove her bra - the last article of clothing of hers that survived the fall.

"Hi Soos." She said, still struggling. "Dove's better at explaining things, so I'll let her talk instead."

"Soos, with Takeshi being... a complicated relationship, you are the closest I have to a human target of affection. And .GIFfany, while you may have been a giant ass - I'm not talking about our large, rounded glutei maximi either - you are still my former boss and my sister. I still feel like I owe you to be grouped with Soos when I say that I do not believe you should die. I mean... you returned the favor with the downright suicidal Burrda.

"So. You sort of blew up the fucking mecha we were in, we have to go for a rougher plan B. We will use our magic to slow your speed down so that you will not, you know, die. Soos, Melody, .GIFfany, I don't know if you know this, but falling itself is not what kills you. It's the change in speed. All that stuff you see about grabbing ledges is all bullshit. BUT! Each of us can use a lot of our magic in such a way that can slow us down just _barely._ And if we all gather together to do it... pressing you in orbit instead of down to buy us extra time... well, copies! Gather!"

Sure enough, they did. Starting with a ring of the other first-gen professors, then with a massive rain of copies bolting in from their electrical forms. All equally naked. With a wink, Burnda shot a bolt of lightning at the middle-back of Melody's bra, tearing it off.

"Oh, _thank you!_ " She said. "Normally I don't like being naked, but if that's the 'dress code' and that thing was _really_ making me uncomfortable because of the fall... that stupid wire was really heating up."

"I hate bras and only wore them because .GIFfany hated that. I know your pain." Burnda replied. "But now we don't hate her _that much_ so... our nipples are free now!"

"Burnda! We cannot waste an _ounce_ of power here!" Dove ordered. "But that reminds me. Soos, you will be surrounded by nude women from a bunch of angles. And they will be holding you and stuff. Now... if life before you met Melody was any indication, you were not that good with women. I mean, no offense. You're not going to have a heart attack or anything, will you?"

"I should be fine. You know, knowing that we're gonna live, this actually sounds like fun."

"I know, right!" Melody said in agreement.

"Trust me." Dove frowned. "You're gonna be hurled around a lot, and probably end up perched on a tower extending to space, while praying that our air-specialists send you and Melody enough oxygen, since you actually need more than a few weeks to breathe. Now, copies! Let's do this!"

Despite getting a few "Wait, why are we taking orders from _you?_ " they flew to the triad in what was practically a formation, holding everyone together in a ball. That grew larger and larger as more began gathering in. Beneath them, static formed and directions changed. What started as three falling people became a growing, if slowing, comet that flew in perfect orbit with a rainbow trail. This was greatly helped when about three and a half hundred of oddly-coordinated, special combat suit-wearing copies that called one-another "Degrees" (followed by a number between 1 and 361) gave out fast directions. After a dozen circles, and finally growing to a massive state, the comet drew to a near stop just by the ruins of Gravity Falls. At the very bottom of this ball, kicking her bare legs through the air to keep that extra bit of slow-down, was Hato, nearly drained of power. Her heels dragged across the deep dirt as she broke into laughter.

"Oh, this has been one _TERRIBLE_ Sunday!" She said, just before the sphere collapsed in on itself, most copies involved running out of energy and making it to a sleep.

"Oh, and one last thing." Said Dove to Soos and Melody.

"What?" Soos asked.

"We just broke from our re-entry fall thing. And... due to how it works... well... prepare for a _shock._ "

Energy washed over the entire tower, which also knocked out both of the humans atop it.

* * *

6:00 AM.

Sunlight rays hit Soos's entire self at once when it rose above the tower of .GIFfanys stretching to the heavens. This dawn of a new day was what finally woke him up, as he looked around to see a sleeping Rose attempting to hold him in a sort-of ring of the other professors, a knocked out Melody and .GIFfany being within this 'ring' as well.

He stood up from his position - slowly, carefully, walking among the mountain of flesh he was placed upon. And he looked over the edge.

Below, a growing amount of skin, mermaid tails, wings, and the like of all colors, shapes, and sizes took up most of his vision. However, he could still see the Earth - he was once again belted out back to where he could see its curvature, with both the Moon and the Planet Negation Girl within clear view. The latter directly above him.

"Wow." He said. "Dude. I wish I still had a camera - wait! Dove has most of that, so maybe-"

He slipped just after he could glance over at the aformentioned professor - but found that Melody caught his hand just before he was about to be sent on a plummet.

"So..." Melody said. "I'm trying not to completely freak out. This is a lot to take in."

"Yeah, it is. One day, you're getting a video game to help you go on dates. A few weeks later, and you're on a mountain made of physical copies of her looking at the space fortress she made above and really wanting to go home below."

"Ur... urg... ughhhhh..."

The pair heard .GIFfany rasping that. Turning around, they found her. Her eyes were shadowed by her hair, and there was still blood on her face. She glared at them. For a few moments, her entire form flashed a number of imagry - mostly of various abstract cosmic-like patterns, before going back to her. Melody leaned herself on Soos's shoulder for comfort. He did the same to her.

"That blast wore off. I can use my rift again. Soos, I..." she continued, "don't know."

Soos walked over and offered a hand to her.

"R-really...?" .GIFfany asked. "After everything I had done... and after everything you did...

"...

"...

"...

"It is only _NOW_ that you are being _NICE_ to me?"

"Wait, what?" Soos asked in response.

"I built a fantasy world for the two of us! And you fought until you were out! And now you just want to... make up for that, and- urgh. I am not even sure if I like you anymore."

She half-got up, making sure to use one of her hands to cover her crotch. Soos kept his hand out, but he looked off to the side for a moment.

"Okay, I'm not as good with these big changing speeches as Dipper is, but I think I can give it a try myself. You see, um... you're... well... you don't have to be like this?"

"But I do not know what I am otherwise, except to make my player love me. Since you burned my disc, I have had a lot of mixed feelings. But now? I do not know what I am. I do not know who I am."

"Well, it's never too late to try to be someone. Just look all below us! You're surrounded by other future yous! Some of them better than others, but they're all trying to be different from who they used to be. I changed over the summer. Dipper and Mabel sure changed over the summer. Maybe it's your turn."

She stood up all the way, continuing to cover herself with one hand. Brushing her hair with the free hand, the shadows began fading away.

"Did you know we are solar powered?" She asked. "They should be waking up shortly... anyway, I will think this over."

"Come on. I think what you need is a reset. Let's try to steer you away from being a crazy ex-girlfriend, and more towards what these people around us are. Let's start."

"...I do not really know..."

"Come on, a new beginning. Like this day is like a new beginning of... days and stuff. Is there anything you want to change?"

"Actually, there is. Having this rift does not fit me very well. And I have to constantly keep my form stable so that nothing will break through from it, which is exhausting. I am not saying that the rift is what made me so violent and determined to get you. That was all on me. But let me just..."

Her eyes turned white. Floating blue and red specks began emerging from all around her skin, eventually forming a small 'mass' that resembled the rift as it was in Ford's container. She took a breath in, surrounded it with pink electricity, and it began closing up-

Suddenly, half of Bill stretched out from it, managing to fit an arm with his cane out. His eye buldging as this invisible band stretched around him, shouting as he furiously waved his cane around, gradually getting redder.

"NO! I WAS SO CLOSE! SO CLOSE TO CRACKING THE CODE AND GETTING PAST YOUR FIREWALL! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO STOP A DREAM DEMON FROM STARTING HIS ULTIMATE FREAKY PARTY?! ARGH! I'LL KILL YOU! I WON'T REST UNTIL EVERY LAST MEMBER OF YOUR VIDEO GAME FAMILY IS DEAD! THERE'S NO WAY YOU'LL BE ABLE TO STOP ME! I'M OUT FOR YOUR PIXELY HEADSSSSSSS...!"

He was stuffed back in, and the rift disappeared in a flash of light atop the tower. .GIFfany's eyes reverted to normal, except she was staring at the human pair.

"Who was that?" .GIFfany asked.

Soos gave a dismissing wave. "Oh, just some guy that went into Mr. Pines's mind and possessed Dipper and wanted to end the world. I don't think he's that important. Now, about you. Come on, let's see it. New version."

"Um..."

"When the cherry petals of magic romance academy are in bloom... anthyding can hadplen."

"..." .GIFfany sighed, avoiding eye contact. "Oh, hi there... my name is Giffany... and I am a schoolgirl at school university. Will you carry my books?"

She lifted her free hand to try to bring options up, but realized that the rift helped her do that.

"Pretend that I have boxes. 'Yes of course.' 'I am impatient! Date me now!' 'Hey look, a squid.'"

"I think I'd rather just poke your face."

He made a "Boop" noise as he lightly tapped on her nose each time, which got a few giggles out of her. Then more of a laugh. Then tears started forming on her face. Then, she moved her covering-hand out of the way and lept into him for a hug. Soos soon returned the hug, patting her on the back.

"Welcome to humanity, .GIFfany!" He said.

.GIFfany sniffed a few times, head over his shoulder. "You and Melody make a great couple. I hope you have a good future together."

"Aw, thanks. Coming from you, that means a lot. Oh, and Melody, I hope you don't mind that I'm hugging my ex-girlfriend and we're both naked. That doesn't bother you, does it?"

"...I'm still having troubling comprehending everything that just happened. I mean, who was that big triangle and what did he have to do with any of this again? You knew him?"

She found herself getting pressed against Soos's back, turning around to see that Dove was wide-awake, and hugging the both of them.

"I'm sorry." She said with a few sniffs. "I just love happy endings. Plot twist, I can be a big softie inside."

"O-okay." Soos said, his face notably getting redder. "L-look, I don't feel too comfortable in naked group hugs like this - I mean-"

A copy - likely Wire Untangler back from the caves, although if if was then that third eye on her forehead must have been previously covered by her hair - gasped at the display, cheering "Group hug!"

She joined in, and was shortly followed by copy after copy waking up, jumping in to a new pile. This caused an... odd effect where the core trio were sinking deeper and deeper into the copy party as they instinctively moved in, falling through like quicksand and _sort of_ making their way down as the copy pileup also began sinking in on itself.

"G-guys, I don't know how to say this..." Soos said. Both Melody and .GIFfany alike had the same wide-eyed expression as they tunnelled past one copy after another balling on them. "But, um... I think my therapy-hug with .GIFfany already worked and now this is just awkward... I don't know if I... uh... _wow,_ Dove wasn't kidding, this is a lot of girls... we... uh..."

* * *

Stan, Wendy, and Ford immediately broke into a run from Domain 1's Wire to see the pileup. Just in time for Soos, Melody, and .GIFfany to be spotted exiting from it. The former and latter were both cleared of their blood - a towel that .GIFfany was currently using to wipe her stomach seemed to be the case, explaining its red stains as well. For whatever reason, all three of them were beet-red and glanced away from one-another with horizontal mouths.

"Soos, you're alive!" Stan cheered. "So, since you're not trying to kill .GIFfany anymore, I take it you blurted your guts all over her or something like that and now she's not crazy anymore?"

All three of them stood up straight, blushed even harder, look back at the tower (copies were rushing out to continue hugging them, and the height itself was slowly but certainly being exchanged for width), and waved their hands defensively.

"W-we didn't- Soos is a great-" Melody began.

"There was no 'blurting' involved! None at all!" Said .GIFfany.

"We looked at the sky and said some kinda-philosophical junk and had a 'group hug' and now we're friends." Said Soos. "So, let's change the subject! Where's Dipper and Mabel?"

"They called us right when we left that energy thing." Said Stan. "They said they're waiting for a long elevator ride out of the 'heart,' but they'll be fine. Now you, you were _out._ We thought about checking on you first."

"Let's go to them right now!"

* * *

Silence occured as three particular, specific children watched the 'pileup' chaos on a screen along the PNG.

"...What was that?" Dipper asked. Him being silent from the scene was not surprising. The fact that it made _Mabel_ speechless is something else. "O-okay, Soos is alive. I know that. I don't want to know anything else."

"I thought that hug was kind of touching. But then they sank in, and we saw _every minute_ of that pile falling on itself... it looked so weird." Said Mabel. "Like a kind of rainbow-vomit-ish tower eating itself face-first and growing out to a big ball. I don't get it."

Both of them turned to Gideon, still as tired as he was before Giffany's departure.

"So... are you going to give up too?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah," Mabel added, "you can't use Bill because he just lost what he wanted the most, Giffany stopped liking you since before she started the Gifocalypse, and Dove..."

"Dove was like your new boss, and even she quit. Follow in her footsteps."

Gideon drew in an especially deep breath before he began talking again. "No! I... I..." more huffs, "Mabel, if Giffany can befriend Soos, I'll... I'll at least..."

"Befriend her?" Dipper asked. "You're gonna need a little more of a... clean slate for that."

"No...! I won't settle for friendship like Giffany did! I want love!"

"...Well, you could _try to start_ by not killing us." He said.

"...And you're gonna have to do a _lot_ more than that to get me to like you as more than a fri- no, more than an enemy." Said Mabel. "The other Giffany copies had a better history with us than you did. And that's saying a lot. So you need to drop your sword and be a better person."

"You don't understand." He hissed. "That spell to bring her back was my last ticket out of prison. And... and... everything I went through..."

"Gideon..." Mabel lifted her hands and changed her tone to that of someone trying to reason with their pet. "You're out of prison now... be a good boy... put the sword down..."

While he _did_ drop it, it seemed more like a move out of exhaustion.

"Riiiiight..." continued Mabel, "Goooood..."

Gideon practically fell in to her arms. Again, that seemed to be more because he was absolutely exhausted from the next-gen battle than it was a move of generocity.

"Now, can we hug it out like Soos and Giffany did?" She asked further, which was immediately met with a look of absolute horror on Dipper's face - more horror that he had through the entire summer. Combined.

"No, no, _no. Absolutely_ not like Soos and Giffany. Now, let's get out of here."

* * *

It was amazing how similar Gravity Falls now looked at day and at night with that giant _thing_ still happening to land so that its 'entrance' was right above the town. This time, the younger Pine twins were able to join the crowd looking up at it among the ruins of the town, flanked by all the other citizens, and they in turn were flanked by the mass of Giffany's sisters. None of which had gotten redressed.

"Wow." Dipper said as he looked straight upward (not just to get a better view of the PNG from Earth when saving Soos was not something to worry about, but to avoid gazing at Giffany's nude family). "That... actually looks kind of ugly. Seeing that much pink every time I look up... I imagine that's gonna hurt my eyes."

"I know, right?" Wendy added. "It's the kind of thing that really burns into your retinas."

Giffany silently nodded.

"Yes, we should redecorate a little now that our ninth sister is more... cooperative." Said Rose.

Mabel nodded in agreement. "You guys go do that-"

"- _And please put on some clothes._ " Dipper interrupted. "I didn't say anything before mostly because I was afraid of getting mauled and because you wore at least _something,_ but now I think I'm safe and I know that billions of naked Giffanys is where I draw the line. Becides, I've grown to... kind of trust you. Except for maybe you, 'Risen.'"

Mabel finished what she started anyway. "-While we get ready for our birthday. It's in less than two weeks, and you're _all_ invited!"

"All of them?" Dipper asked. "Well... even 'Risen?'"

"Please do not call me that anymore." Aformentioned copy said, barely louder than being under her breath. "Just call me Giffany. You can remove the dot and the capital I and F, too. That reminded me too much of my computerized form, anyway."

"Yes or no. You still have, on _just the tiniest level,_ some obsession over Soos." Dipper indirectly asked said copy.

"...Yes."

"See?"

"Now, just wait." Mabel said with a finger held high with one hand. The other, she dug through her sweater with. "I saved this here, just in case of an emergency. The one thing that might be able to help her get over her obsession..."

When that second hand emerged, it held the anti-love potion.

Dove's previous-neutral expression _immediately_ turned into a heavy scowl. She began running over to where Mabel stood.

"Just a li'l spray of this, and-"

" _OOPS!_ " Dove shouted as she blatantly yanked the potion from Mabel's hands, tossed it over her back, and intentionally got it to land so that it broke on Tambry's head, covering her and Robbie with black anti-love magic. Both of them blinked a little.

"Hey." Said Robbie. "I don't know how to describe this, but I feel, like... a kind of... not being interested in you right now?"

Tambry's eyes darted between him and her phone. "Yeah... uh... and I'm... we'll text about it... later."

"Okay." He said, turning away. "Dove, I don't know what that black stuff, but it like, killed my entire mood."

Mabel snapped her head over to the weapons professor, shaking her clenched fists. " _What did you do that for?_ They were in a perfectly fine relationship and I was about to make Giffany-"

"First off, _DON'T TRY TO WARP MY FAMILY'S BRAINS!_ " Dove belted back in Mabel's direction. "Giffany and I may have been on a bad start, but I will _NOT_ approve of you trying to alter her very core through magic tampering! How would you like it if I tried to make Ford forgive Stan by altering his brain structure to add more remourse? You might not know Ford for long, but dammit, he's still family and that shit _should_ still disgust you. Second, relationships that start with date rape are disgusting! A _true_ matchmaker uses their own charm, charisma, and dialogue. Or just tries to subliminally woo over their targets with hidden messages, if that fails. I mean, Robbie." She gave a thumbs-up to him. "Mad props for that with Wendy."

He _immediately_ felt Tambry giving him a quizzical look. "Wait- guys- I didn't know I-"

"Love potions wear off, stupid!" Mabel said. "In three hours! Their love after that was real love! And here you are trying to ruin them!"

"...Oh. Well, if it really is 'true love,' then hopefully they'll work things out. If that fails," Dove shrugged, "then he could just use his subliminal messaging on Tambry instead. So, Mabel, still wanna invite me to your party? Because I'm already un-inviting myself."

To sum things up, their relationship didn't work out after that.

"Dove, subliminal messaging is also bad." Dian spoke up.

" _Also?_ " Asked Dipper. "Are you saying that - ...no, sorry Mabel. You're on your own here. I don't think I can fight this battle for you. That Dove humiliated me in front of most of the town. Saying I had a crush on Wendy was one thing, and calling it an obsession..."

Dove began walking away, but Mabel kept glancing in her direction.

"...You know what? You're still invited!" She said. "Because I still want to try to be friends with _all_ of you now!"

"That's not a very good idea..." said Rose, "I do not want you to kill them _now_ \- in a way I am back to not wanting them to die, as they are friendl _ier_ \- but going out of your way to be _friends_ with them is... well, to be on the blunt side, suicidal."

"Nah," Mabel retorted, "this is a happy ending, but I think I can make it happier."

"Yes, that's the spirit..." said Abuelita, walking out from the middle of the copy-pileup in the same dress code that they had. "Why just settle for 'regular happy' when you could make it better?"

"Abuelita?" The still-naked Soos asked. "Why are you naked?"

"Oh Soos, I was not safe from the fall from space either."

"What- but how-"

"I was following you for the entire adventure."

* * *

 _Highlights of that included:_

 _Ducking under water just when Kathody tricked them into thinking Dove was behind the group._

 _Checking into a room upstairs from where the group slept in Domain 5._

 _Sleeping in a bunker in Daminna's part of Domain 9, with her permission and everything._

 _Sitting as part of the audience in Domain 12._

 _Launching herself out of another escape pod on the PNG to view Soos and Giffany's hand-to-hand showdown, and leaping out herself after the pod started displaying an error message._

* * *

"Wow. And you even dodged all of Dove's radar stuff?" Soos asked her.

"Oh," Giffany replied to that, "we thought you already knew she was with you guys."

"...Still though. Is it really a happy ending?" Asked Soos. "I mean, the Planet Negation Girl is still there. Heck, it's like, the _only Main Possession_ that didn't get blown up or destroyed or had a smiley face drawn on it. If there's one thing movies and video games taught us, it's that big space-planets in the sky are bad. _Especially_ if it looks like they're right above us."

"...Uh, Soos." Dipper said. "This entire adventure was because of how video games and movies don't work like real life. And thinking something like that is what got this one guy killed - Ron... something."

As if saying his name one too many times brought him in to the area, a flash of light occured. The Time Baby appeared from it, flanked by four time cops, the mega-infant holding Ron telekinetically.

"This man has been caught trying to alter the timeline in a fashion that may have caused a massive paradox erasing the universe from existence." Said one of the cops. "But our cells were overfilling and because of what this guy considers 'punishment...' we simply grabbed him from the inner timelines and decided that placing him right after the 'main conflict' was over was punishment enough."

"NOOOOOOOO!" Ron cried.

Frowning even as he was released from Time Baby's grip and the squad warped away, Ron soon found himself locking eyes with Giffany.

"I still know that you're the super evil ultimate villain! I can _sense_ it!"

"Have you heard of a demon named Bill Cipher?" Dipper asked, looking over at the surrounding crowd. Oh, and helicopters were starting to fly in just to check out what in the world was going on. "Yeah, Giffany leaked everything to everyone, I think they'll know who he is. Anyway, I think _he's_ the real bad guy. Not her."

"But... but... maybe she even killed my dad somehow..."

.GIFfany herself face-palmed. "Urgh. First Rumble, now you. Why do people keep accusing me of killing fathers?"

"Technically you did kill your own." Said Bubbles.

In a bit of a distance, Rumble was heard exploding - _literally_ \- as his mind tried to process that, pixels scurrying off to regenerate him back in his arcade.

And thus, Wendy found herself holding back Ron as he tried reaching towards .GIFfany and/or Dove, spouting things like "Dumb fake anime monster!" "I don't want to see that many people naked!" and "Why do they make their pubic hair match their head hair? It's gross!"

* * *

 **Continued on the Epilogue.**


	15. Game Over (Official Ending) Epilogue

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 13: Game Over (Epilogue)**

* * *

Just to get it out of the way - naturally, news and the internet completely blew up over the reveal of the true nature of _Romance Academy 7_. News stories, quickly-made and quickly-debunked rumors, fake bootlegs, a number of legal issues (mostly sorted by Dove and Courtlyn - who _kind of_ got along enough) came and went, and for the most part, all but one of the copies beamed off to work on either sorting that out or their old domains one last time. Or a bit of both.

By the way, the Halloween Trickster did manage to track the Mystery Shack team down to... well, said tourist attraction. Except now that they were _not_ in a creepy house in the middle of a desert or the entrance to a massive cavern, Dipper was able to peacefully convince him that he could just wait until Halloween for Soos to eat. And he accepted that offer, disappearing until Soos ate him on October 31st. But that's getting ahead of everything.

The planned road-trip mass-prank may had been canceled as the morning of its planned day was spent fighting a mega mecha in space and shaking off all the naked Giffany, but Mabel still found out about Dipper holding on to Wendy. He did try his flirting skills with the various girls of Gravity Falls - namely Pacifica and Candy - but that backfired.

Horribly.

 _Horribly._

Moving on from this story trying to argue in favor for 'Roadside Attraction' by implying a bad-case scenario, things lightened up in time for Dipper and Mabel's 13th birthday preparation. Apologies were forgiven and relationships failed to move further, but the more important part was that said week before the birthday went by with only one issue. Mabel running off to the woods after coming to the realization of nothing staying the same forever. Of course, the massive secondary-planet of pink hovering above her that did not even exist for most of the summer served as a great reminder. Without a breaking rift-holder to attend to, Dipper went out to comfort her while Stan and Ford finally finished the discussion they had regarding issues from the fight on the summit. Mabel came to the realization that it was entirely possible for her to just stay in Gravity Falls herself. Dipper eventually turned down the apprenticeship, and considered setting his goals in mind for places other than the town.

The one copy that did not work with any domain for the final two weeks of the summer was Giffany, who instead got a job at the Mystery Shack, as a fake 'ghost of the Shack' that would appear through holograms and try to lead people through. Because of her not initially changing her appearance from her default form, people saw through it, but it was nontheless convincing enough. Her job was changed to a staff-regular once Stan gave official ownership to Soos and went touring the world with his brother and look for any signs of Bill. Whom had gone completely silent ever since his familialcidal declaration - all amounts of weirdness Ford had picked up for the near future were not tied to him at all, but rather other, completely unrelated outbursts of weirdness that were just part of nature. Melody, another newly-hired member of the Mystery Shack staff, objected at first - but the two ended up getting along... _enough_ despite Giffany's odd tendencies to bring Rumble back and have surprisingly hard-to-decipher conversations with him. That, half the time, ended in a battle.

As Dipper and Mabel boarded the bus to lead and they were waved goodbye from a row of gnomes, manotaurs, and (inside some weird yellow electric barriers) the ghostly couple, they expected things after leaving town boarders to be as quiet and boring as they initially thought the town itself would be.

And then Kathody beamed herself on the bus, causing the passengers that were awake to shake a little in startling. Except the twins, who groaned.

"Wait!" She said. "I can't believe I forgot this until right now! You all played a game, right? What would a game be without credits?" She pointed to the window with both hands. "Hit it!"

 **run:gifocalypse**

 **A story by Great Pikmin Fan**

Those words were not what Kathody displayed as scrolling past on the windows. Instead, she displayed technical credits about _Romance Academy 7_ itself.

Right after the twins looked at the note signed with all the names of the various people and beasts they've encountered, Mabel went back to toying around with the emerald key card in her hands.

 **Inspriations and Thanks:**

 _ **Super Mario**_ **franchise for the settings;** _ **Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon**_ **for the possession-themed antagonists**

A bright flash of white appeared in Mabel's room hours after getting off from the bus. A Wire. Matching the main pink-red color of her shooting star sweater. Attached to it was a green note:

 _Think of this as a birthday present._

 _PS, spawning it inside your house was Risen Giffany's idea. She still has problems with the idea of... "not following everything someone does."_

Mabel plugged in the card without much hesitation, in spite of Dipper about to reach out for something only to regret the move right after.

 _ **King of the Hill**_ **for a character's gimmick, and being a pretty decent show from beginning to end**

She ended up on the Planet Negation Girl, oddly enough - the patch she was on was recolored emerald, with the coloration on its way to spread out. Professor Rose, picking the default school uniform as a temporary outfit (as with all other copies that did not retain going nude), greeted Mabel and gave her a scarlet card to lead back home.

"Well, we decided to cooperate... but that just leaves one question." Rose Said. " _Where_ do we go from there? How will we work together?"

Mabel replied, "I think we should start by giving this place a makeover."

They began wandering the empty streets, a few guidelines made here and there.

One year later.

Rose's new office was along a bustling forest, the metal of her buildings (with, notably, a good amount of hospitals) being broken up by gardens and tree-clusters. Vegetables grew from this location, stretching up to the sky and being tended by a multitude of students. On a lone, lit bench, Mabel, Kenny, and Rose sat, examining a newspaper listing rumors of a being that can change its shape. Rose's outfit for this day was a 'dress' that really resembled a large curve of wood barely, somehow, stuck to her body. Her bare right side was visible. Mabel also saw a shift in outfit - her sweater for these moments swapped out the shaking hands for a single hand giving a thumb's up.

 _ **The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask**_ **for part of the atmosphere and side-character focus**

A year before, Mabel zipped to the Sahara to find Kathody frantically rushing around to wrap "DANGER" tape around the former Domain 2. When asked why, she replied that she finally found the _real_ ghosts, and they were _way too powerful._ Mabel left just after the pink pieces loaned from the PNG were tossed out the walls, especially as a _noticeably loud_ roar happened just beforehand.

Now, Kathody's part of the PNG was surrounded by blowing, yet harmless sands, her proudly-sculpted new amber buildings providing horror-thrills and an explosion of skeletal-themed roller coaster rides. After stepping out, Victoria and Mabel gladly grabbed the photos of their ride down the Deadarm River while enjoying the vegetable stew served. Kathody patted both of them on their backs, and was now dressed in some sort of elaborate barely-covering outfit that consisted of a completely hollowed fake jack-o-melon for a top and a similar jack-o-lantern for a bottom.

 _ **Total Drama**_ **for a throwback, and general "practice" for writing large casts**

A year before, the former Domain 3 was off limits to humans. The buildings were being pulled apart and relocated, and the dome was already gone. Mabel was greeted by a school of copies swimming around with tools and pieces, with barely any way to look down in to the former ocean factory.

Now, Searah's sector tripled as a beach vacation, water park, and gym. Sapphire buildings from both in and out of water stretched tall, and massive tanks of water were imported to be purified properly. Helping the water supply was the slow atmosphere that began forming on the PNG over the months. Dean engaged in a conversation with several other visiting humans, including Mabel, who were watching a presentation of mixing ectoenergy with water. Searah herself led this lecture, in more of a sling bikini.

 _ **OFF**_ **for the idea about powerful beings trying to craft their own new worlds**

A year before, everything in the former Domain 4 was getting packed up as Mabel entered it. She took in that fresh, canyon air as Sandy mentioned that their spiritual location was being relocated. Her students also rushed to pick up various mats, paint buckets, and glass bottles.

Now, the topaz portion of the PNG housed a number of temples among several rocky canyons, many of which had pure, sparkling, fresh water to help medatation. Mabel tried one of the many 'mental healing' techniques with Sandy and Haruki. Sandy had even _less_ mud on than her starting outfit, with barely only a large splotch over her breasts and a panty-like shape over her front, with nothing on her entire back half.

 _ **Homestuck**_ **for... some names... the color-coding system, and a few power-related elements**

A year before, the former Domain 5 just seemed to have been picked up by health inspectors and critics as Mabel came in to see Cardia announce its closing. It got positive reviews regardless.

Now, the flower fields of Cardia's indigo section were roaming with farm animals and dragons. Firm, hard rock kept them caged in, while their cooked and processed forms had been approved to be served. Mabel and Waddles in particular enjoyed a meal by one table, while Cardia, Souma, and Hato enjoyed one in another. Cardia decorated herself for that day with an outfit held up by bones on either side of her hung over her shoulders, and two additional bones crossing her front in her essential locations.

 _ **The Wonderful 101**_ **for the themes towards the end and general escalation**

A year before, springs were being drained in the former Domain 6, and showers were being shut off. Mabel was about to make a joke about bathing there, but Bubbles beat her to it.

Now, the turquoise hot spring center stood along a major collection of steaming ponds. Bubbles preferred preparing dragon meat in different, creative ways - her place's menu was a bit more... 'experimental' than Cardia's, as Taro and Mabel could attest to when Bubbles herself served them a few _very_ unwanted parts while they steamed up in one of the springs. Her suds were no longer nearly-shapeless, and instead arranged in a form closer to that of a bikini.

 _ **Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann**_ **, also for the escalation, "follow the future" theme, and general hopefulness**

A year before, the Amazon Rainforest seemed even _more_ humid once Mabel returned there one last time. Turns out that, along with the rest of the dismantling of the former Domain 7, the place originally had a numbr of dehumidifiers, and according to Leona, they were among the first things removed.

Now, amaranth served as the go-to color for art, as buildings glistening in that color were those of the major artwork showcasing. Leona, 'wearing' rose-colored paint to look like a simple top and shorts, had to explain to Takumi why there was only really one spot dedacated to him, although he eventually loosened up and counted the few photos of him and her physical form in their office. Mabel's favorite activity there was the paintball zone, especially considering the great smells from various products used to freshen up the arenas.

 _ **Perfect Hair Forever**_ **for a really stupid character design that I've semi-crammed into this**

A year before, the frogs have apparently returned to the Everglades safe and sound. That _CLOSED_ was still on the wall of the former Domain 8 (or, to be really specific, it _was_ removed once Sonia ordered her assault, and stayed that way until the sound-copies returned to their place), but for a different reason. For once, Sonia actually had a smile when Mabel greeted her.

Now, the cobalt portion of the planet-entertainment center housed the occasional retro and new-style painting along with being the go-to place for dance clubs. Mabel and Francis got second-front seats to Sonia's latest orchestra-dubstep hybrid performance, with said professor providing the vocals. It was... better sounding that than description would let on. She made the combination work. This had nothing to do with how her outfit was a pair of belts positioned so that the piano key-like features dropped over and 'covered' her essentials.

 _ **Steven Universe**_ **for... I'm sure that show inspired something in this, probably related to the elements. PS, Blenda is actually a shout-out to Twinrova, not Garnet**

A year before, the four ex-hijackers had teasingly told Dian that she could have the whole of the former Domain 9 back while they work under her, just for Daminna to suggest closing it as it stood completely and re-working it to an area to beam up to the PNG. Mabel was there to spot Dian and Noriko giving the cavern entrance one last look.

Now, the PNG's amethyst sector, from the city down to deep in its own purple-rocked caves, had tubes flowing with medicines through it. Various songs from Sonia's students played on the radio as Mabel and Noriko walked by, past Daminna's free-fall/free-fly area, Sizzcorra's liquid 'sandbox,' the various tournaments hosted by Peachaulinsalinaisy, and Alma's spider museum. Just before Mabel left to continue her visits, she spotted Noriko running up to Dian, the professor of poison being surrounded by students as she worked with an assortment of powdery materials. Dian's costume was a pair of bands around her chest and waist that... kind of resembled fake, purple moss.

 **General internet fads and trends to humanize** _ **EVERYTHING**_ **, especially giving them an attractive form, for inspiring most of the out-there designs for the professors**

A year before, Professor Wendy had just sold her final car while working, unauthorized, in India. (Dove sorted things out and kept her from getting ' _too_ arrested') With the former Domain 10 being closed down, she gave one final handshake, and helped her students tear apart the metal that her structure was made of. When asked if she would like to stand in front of a fake fence and drink like in _King of the Hill_ , she initially politely declined, but Mabel managed to convince her to get just a little bit nostalgic towards her time as a _King of the Hill_ fan.

Now, wind and a heavy atmosphere in more than one sense of the word blew through the jade portion of the PNG, which probably resembled the stereotypical 'future city' the most. Flying cars were the most common here - of both actual cars and roller coasters. Upon arrival, Mabel had to brace herself to avoid getting blown away, but she did manage to find Wendy M. alternating between watching a Let's Play of Hayate, cringing at background commentary of the _King of the Hill_ revival (a rather divisive revival caused by the sheer spike in people watching [adult swim] reruns; said people being Prof. Wendy's own students and she herself back in the Gifocalypse; and this Wendy herself was in a pink dress that made a bell-like shape, which constantly showed her undergarments even while standing still. Still, she was wearing undergarments in the first place, which is more than what could be said for a good number of copies), and watching a number of giant spider-trainers in the area. Wendy C. also happened to be there, _dueling_ with a mega-spider of her own. Despite the announcement on the end of the Gifocalypse that she would be ending it, Professor Wendy also kept up her Tumblr blog. Windy (dash) Hill (dash) Queen. Dot Tumblr, Dot Com. A pretty boring site, though.

 **Miscellaneous shout-outs and character quick design-cameo inspirations:** _ **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**_ **(Leona's overseers),** _ **The First Funky Fighter**_ **(Burnda's overseers),** _ **Yandere Simulator**_ **(two names of really minor characters - Yui from chapter 4, Bubbles's player Taro),** _ **HuniePop**_ **(Professor Aiko, one of .GIFfany's outfits),** _ **Magi: Labyrinth of Magic**_ **(Wire Untangler from chapter 9, as I already stated), the long-dead "Creamsicle" meme thing (Keyboard to One's Heart from chapter 9), a tiny web game** _ **Stupidella**_ **(...She was going to serve as the basis of fighter #3 from chapter 9, but a quick glance revealed that I hadn't actually done that... maybe for a later edit, and well, credit anyway),** _ **Ed, Edd n Eddy**_ **(while nothing alike otherwise, Searah is named after Sarah for a really stupid reason),** _ **Undertale**_ **(various small themes here and there, including .GIFfany's Main Possession-transformation and the tile puzzle gag),** _ **Epic Battle Fantasy**_ **(players Kimberly and Victoria are named after minor naked NPCs there; Akron from the third game served as partial inspiration for .GIFfany's Main Possession-transformation),** _ **The Simpsons**_ **(Sandwich costume mentioned in chapter 12)**

A year before, it seemed like the former Domain 11 was only brought afloat just to tear it down. Shannon was in charge of most of the handling of the liquid silver, her students taking care of the actual factory. Mabel was allowed one final joy ride through the monorails around the Canadian wildnerness. Just about all of the Glitches were patched up - there was an occasional jitter here and there, but even they were healing.

Now, the peridot portion of the PNG shone especially bright, and it was littered with equal parts virtual reality machines and workshops to help make those into realities. Mabel, upon visiting one of the latter, happened to come across Kimberly hammering up a sort-of flashlight, with Shannon in nothing but three patches of whipped cream occasionally stepping in to give her instructions. She also caught sight of Dipper, although he was off on a corner with a jetpack on his back reading about something involving the black magic used to make all of this even possible.

There were no signs of any Glitched copies.

 **Paul Robertson, not only for designing .GIFfany and Rumble in the first place, but as his works also served as more inspiration for .GIFfany's Main Possession-transformation**

A year before, Mabel happened to catch sight of Burnda trollishly announcing that she was just ending up the final episode of her show... before renaming it as it was no longer going to be in Parícutin. She laughed this off while Burrda stood becide her, and said that it was time to take the giffinium out of the former Domains 12 and 13. Shortly after that, both twins happened to beam towards where Mabel was watching that, warning her that it would be too dangerous to stay in the area once the heat-aborbing metal was removed.

Now, ruby and diamond-white alternated among that particular sector of the artificial planet. The former parts were only comfortably toasty despite all of the fake lava going around and through them, and the latter were only nice and cool despite being blanketed in snow. After passing Stan and Ford training against combatting-copies with mastery over size-alteration, she spotted a television display of the Burn/Burr twins performing a magic act that involve slicing Gerald in half. Burnda might have pulled the trick off rather convincingly, but she had zero hint of any malace in the action itself. If anything, she seemed a bit regretful. They had fancy suits (Burnda's dark red with an orange flame pattern, Burrda's silver with a light blue flame pattern), only swapping out pants for skirts that began and ended at their waist and black thongs underneath.

 _ **Gravity Falls**_ **itself, for being the show that made this exist, and providing an incredible storyline that entertained me since I started watching it in late 2014, to its ending in 2016, as well as hopefully being part of an inspiration to new animated series that will follow in its footsteps and even improve on its structure**

A year before, taking the black key card did lead to the former Domain 14, except with only the Wire left out of all of Dove's 'additions.' Mabel ran towards the edge to see Dove's students apologetically returning the carrier to its owners while explaining everything, which also included a complex series of loopholes that proved that the way Dove did this involved no law breaks whatsoever. She also appeared to be on some sort of dock. An AI flew up to her and asked if she wanted to see Dove right when six more removed the black Wire. Mabel accepted, and got flown back to Gravity Falls for her _actual_ final moments there for the year of 2012.

Dove had accepted the cops making her do community service by single-handedly repairing the entire town from everything she did to it. Mayor Tyler had proposed that once that was done and she gave all the floors a good scrubbing, (in addition to the two then discussing 'mercy') the town would start a 'Never Mind All That Act' to forbid any mentioning of the town getting blown up. However, the massive space-city with its closest point to Earth still being _right above the town_ made questions too hard to deflect, especially given as Dove apparently does _not_ believe in keeping secrets.

That aside, Mabel did manage to find the militant professor. She, dressed in a prisoner's outfit (based on the way Dove was uncomfortably tugging at it, that was _not_ her choice), gave a glance at Mabel and snarled.

"Hi." Mabel said. "Rose sent me a key card, and now I'm just giving all the professors a li'l visit. I'm supposed to be back home now, but you're here so... I guess that means I'm here."

Dove layed another brick down. "Mabel, I may not be invested in carnage anymore, but I still have no idea where to move on with my life when I finish in the next month or so, and I still am not the biggest fan of you. Rumor has it that the professors are all relocating to the ex-Planet Negation Girl, which they will turn into a group-effort major rainbow 'domain' renamed the Planet of Neo Greatness. Shitty name, I think, but they wanted to keep its initials PNG. Because computers. Regardless, my former attitude and... specialties are no longer welcome here, I know that already."

"Have you... you know, thought about turning your old life around?"

Dove closed her eyes and took a deep, hard breath. "Yes... maybe. Actually, I should turn it around completely! Yes! Instead of making weapons - aside from self-defense of course - I will make medical aid! And I will go from trying to find ways to hurt and enslave people... to trying to heal and free them! Yes, I found it now! I will train to become a surgeon!"

"...I would have just tried to steer you to being a lobbyist or a lawyer or something." Said Mabel.

"Mabel, for once, thank you. I now know how to revisit my life."

The same AI that brought Mabel to the town also flew her back home. Law-abiding Dove did not allow herself to leave, after all. She was doing community service.

Now, the cosmic-black portion of the Planet of Neo Greatness still had no complete, official hospital. Dove still had to complete med school and anatomy in order to be legally licensed, after all. Although Dove herself, slowly regaining a group of students at her side, was quick to rush towards the aid of anyone with injuries. By the time Mabel zipped over there for 2013, she went through the nicely-air-conditioned industrial weapon-and-bandage complex to find Takeshi finally walking over to the professor of explosives - clad in three bandaids in predictable locations that, mostly breast-wise, did _not_ do their job. He grinned sheepishly as he held a simple robotic arm on the palm of his hand, which waved at her. She gave him a likewise grin as she held up a fake-organic arm from her personal practice models, it waved too, and they both laughed at it.

 **And you, for reading this. Thank you!**

A year ago, Mabel attempted to use the pink key card after being flown back to Piedmont. All that happened was that she floated in her home's original Wire zone for a while, the scanner read INVALID at the card, and booted her back out. She got similar results when she tried to used any of the other cards to check out the domain's PNG counterpart. All of them failed as well, with the sole exception of the one card that first relocated - the emerald one. Mabel decided to just sleep on this one - Giffany should be visit-able tomorrow.

While the next day did see the Wires leading to the new, developing, recoloring PNG, the pink card still got nothing. Eventually, Mabel had to look and see through blog posts and Rose's word that Giffany chose to stay on Earth, working at the Mystery Shack. She decided she could wait until the next summer to see _this_ sibling.

Doomsday prophets were ultimately right about their estimated Maya calendar year, although they were wrong in just about every other aspect, including the factor of a few months. The world did indeed end in 2012, but only to give way to a new world. One of intermixed magic and awareness.

Now.

By the summer of 2013, everything had long since settled. There were still a few driven to madness, but for the most part, society got along with the whirlwind of reveals. It was not like hiding any of this was even possible anymore, especially with the official breaking of the final Blind Eye gun.

From an oddly specific request by Stan, leadership systems effectively became something of a democracy crossed with a 'power-archy' (copies could still enter 'professor-tier' ranks and officially go out, recruit students, and set up their own things. In fact, this happens pretty often - it turned out that it took only about three weeks on average before each copy mastered 'professor-tier' powers), with the 'demo' part specifically being located in the Capital. It turned out that Second-gen Professor Violetta, of all the copies, was basically the PNG's first ever president, and led the second world under a great, happy, sandwich-obsessed rule for the four years to come. Giffany (or, her previous self .GIFfany) was more like a dictator who could not even get that completely right and had a number of things slip by her security. Regardless, Violetta considered calling herself the first-ever robot president, but that sounded silly for a number of reasons.

No, Giffany found comfort eventually working a mundane job at the Mystery Shack, still there as always. Since the PNG's quick recoloring for a monotonous pink city to a multi-colored complex of cities with natural landscapes sprinkled in between, the rainbow sphere up above eventually made for a pretty neat replacement to the actual sky over Gravity Falls. And at night, the lit up but distant buildings provided a good-enough star substitute.

Good enough to still be worth an enjoyable watch at night, which is exactly what Soos, Melody, and Giffany all did the night Dipper and Mabel left again after another summer of finding and fighting monsters, though none of _those_ seemed to be inter-linked or leading up to any uprising of a demon that wanted to end the world. (Or kill off quadrillions of video games.) The trio all lied on their backs for nearly an hour, gazing and pointing as they tried to find shapes (considering the composure of the new PNG, said shapes in the lights might have been intentional in some cases - namely any hearts, cat faces, or images of Charles Darwin's face). When that was all over and done, they headed back to the Mystery Shack.

"I still can't believe it's been a whole year and none of your sisters visited us." Said Soos. "This goes for both of you."

"I know..." Melody replied when they went through the front door. "Even after finally moving in with you... even after the Fight Fighters machine broke down and Giffany was left without a house..."

"Oh yeah, you didn't mind Giffany staying with us for a while last year before she finally moved back in to the cabinet. You're still... okay with that? You know, I have been hanging out with my ex a lot. In fact, when we kinda-became these actual-friends and she really stopped trying to kill me, I even-"

"I thought we agreed to _never_ talk about that again." Said Giffany, with a hint of blush on her face. "Things are going great right now, without bringing _that_ up."

"Oh. Right. Well, goodnight Giffany."

She decided to sleep on the couch - it was the same way last year. As the couple headed off and Giffany telekinetically shut off the lights, she lied down on her back, took in the setting of it all, and a smile grew across her face.

There, in the darkness, she opened her eyes - much brighter than usual. Almost red-tinted, in fact.

"Yes. Things are going _real_ great. After all, everybody is _exactly_ where I want them to be right now." Said .GIFfany.

* * *

 **Closing AN:**

I think this chapter had quite a few hits, but also a lot of misses, frankly. Specifically that stuff at the end of Part 1 about the townsfolk going up against the army of next-gen copies... I put that off until near the very end of writing all three parts of this _and_ "Game Complete," and even then I still didn't like how it ened up. It felt... forced. Like I was trying to just shove in these characters. But everything else? Yeah...

That aside, I enjoyed the chapter itself. I thought it served as a nice-enough finale, and before anyone asks, I prefer leaving that last bit ambiguous. Did .GIFfany really reform in some way and her little "They're all where I want them to be" line was not as harmful as it might imply, or was this whole thing really just a ploy to get her powers back since she got her memories, and also pay off her 'debt' to the professors? Those are the kind of questions I'd want one to think when it comes to this story.

 **Final Thoughts:**

By the way, the chant back in chapter 1? Was just ran through Google Translate to Latin, from "Just get into the body."

So that was _run:gifocalypse_. As you could probably tell by the relatively fast update rate despite the increasingly long chapters, I loved writing this from beginning to end. And I might have some of my future works take a few concepts from _this_ and expand on that - since I did not put this on any sort of hiatus nor did I ever feel _that_ ashamed of it (see: _Total Zeksmit Plains_ ), I guess this really is me coming pretty close to actually doing something right. Heck, in addition to that, I actually like these characters more than my other "12 elemental" incarnations or whatever.

Anyway, as you might have been able to tell, this really doesn't feel much like _Gravity Falls_ , does it? Like the canon characters are just kind of shoved in there for the sake of keeping them relevant in a desperate manner, the element copies took up a lot of the screentime, and backstory aside they really did not have that much in common with .GIFfany? Rest assured, this is why I want to do something that's like an original spiritual successor. (My other stories don't get such luck because, my regret for a lot of them aside, their premises are closer to their original canon. Like a _Homestuck_ one set in Sburb. Or a _Total Drama_ one that's still a competition. _SBIG_... is a trickier issue, but I have had some ideas with that mess.) It won't be a complete ripoff of RG and will have a _lot_ of new stuff, but a few of the major characters will be ripoffs of the professors.

I'll probably silently edit this in to an early chapter, but the reason why the group never really put the IPN into Soos's inventory is because you cannot really store living things there, and the black magic-bodies of the .GIFfany army counted as living things. There, plot hole patched up. If poorly and at the very end of the story. Well, at least it's a minor plothole.

A direct sequel to this is very unlikely (though for craps and giggles I made it a point that I'll do one anyway if _Gravity Falls_ itself gets any kind of revival, regardless of the revival's quality), but I have already been thinking about a remake focused on one thing: balance. Namely, the later copies generally got more and more screentime to their domains, so locations like Kathody's desert haunted house and Searah's water factory have less screentime compared to Leona's... art club. I was thinking of either making an abridged version where most of the professors, namely the pre-Arc 3 ones, have roughly the same amount of length devoted to them, and that length is about... Cardia's, I guess. Or an "expansion" that elaborates more on the bizarre worlds created by the earlier professors. I probably won't do either, though. If I do, I'll kind of remove those plot elements about Kathody/Wendy going over to Searah's/Shannon's, especially since neither ultimately really amounted to that much that I couldn't just portray with them being solo.

 **Notes About Original Plans:**

Originally, Hijacker Peachaulinsalinaisy's reward was a "Flamethrower of Heart," but then I had forgotten that the chapter mentioned that and I thought the swords would be more fitting... even if they were rarely used after said chapter. And not even really used that much _during_ the chapter. I thought about fitting it into something relating to Dove or Burnda because it kind of fit with either of their themes, but... I couldn't really think of a way, so that idea is just up in the air.

There were other, equally minor things here and there, so I feel like jumping straight to the big one: this story, in its earlier planning stages, was going to be a _lot_ more morbid.

It would have been about... five or so chapters. There still might have been a good chunk of the other professors, but many of them would have been crammed into being beaten in a "montage" and on one single chapter. "Game On" and "Pines Vs Trees," however, might have played out the same way. Burnda, Burrda, and Dove still existed around this plan I think, and instead of just blasting Gravity Falls to space, Dove would have carved out the entire two continents of America and shot that up in a blast so deep that it went to the core of the planet, effectively ruining the whole planet. The PNG was called "Cyberspace" and Dipper and Mabel would have gone up it solo - I had planned it to be a deep neon green at the time. Once the twins made it there, they would have journeyed through the tallest tower (early-Capital) and find themselves in a box-shaped arena with screens on all of the walls. .GIFfany would have attacked them there, through a giant form, with the twins using the pack to "drain away her health" similar to a _Luigi's Mansion_ boss. After the end, it turned out that at a point of the story that roughly corresponded to the end of chapter 1, .GIFfany actually sent Dipper and Mabel into a virtual reality - they were in the computer's virtual world right up until the final battle, which somehow took place in Soos's computer itself. It seems like there's relief as the world isn't really destroyed... only .GIFfany somehow brainwashed Soos and he has all copies of her game, ready to start the _real_ Gifocalypse while the twins are still trapped. The story would have ended with Mabel about to make a deal with Bill to get them out of this. I thought that it would be kind of stupid if most of the story was just virtual reality. This is why I pointed out the stupidity of this in chapter 6.

Gideon was also going to have more of a major role, attacking the group on a much more regular basis. His first appearance might have been in chapter 4 (he'll fight them in the Grand Canyon) and he'd be close to a ripoff of Vorkken from _Wonderful 101_. I kind of scrapped this because, as I just said, I didn't want this story to become too much of a ripoff of _Wonderful 101_ (or ANYTHING, for that matter), so he just has two "serious" encounters and he's treated kind of as a joke in "Game Over."

Ron also was planned to legitimately die. I thought it would be too mean-spirited and against the spirit of _run:gifocalypse_ to outright kill him out, even if it was of his own stupidity.

 **Origin Story:**

As I said before, you are free to make a fan fic with a similar idea of .GIFfany trying to take over the world with copies. (Just as long as you don't lazily copy-paste all over the place from either this, any other fanwork, or canon.) The whole reason why I did this was because there was a sheer lack of similar stories.

The _very specific_ circumstances for why I started writing this are a bit embarassing, which is why I shoved it way back here when you're virtually done with the story, instead of the beginning note of chapter 1 and thus acting as your first real thing to judge about it after the summary. Anyway, I hate Pinecest, but there was some kind of fic that says it had that pairing and involved .GIFfany. I was like "what the heck" and wanted to read it anyway. It sounded goofy and weird enough. Turns out said story was completely irrelevant to its summary, characters, and had nothing to do with _Gravity Falls_ \- it was just some intentionally poorly-written nonsense designed to troll. Somewhere along that line I was thinking "Okay, _run:gifocalypse_ has to be written _now_ ," and thus began its writing.

 **Long Overdue Legal Thingy:**

I do not own _Gravity Falls_ or practically anything mentioned here, just in case a single sentence of this story wasn't painfully obvious proof enough.

 **Regarding "Game Complete:"**

"Game Complete" is... uh... just a dumb edgefest alternate ending. Like I said before, as the final plans for the story went on, I regretted the choice to promise it more and more, and I mostly made it anyway to keep with that promise. Still, if you like... I think "Game Complete" would qualify as more of a psychological horror if I actually did a successful job at writing horror (and I'm not immediately saying I did), you _might_ enjoy it. Or if for whatever reason you want to read an alternate ending where .GIFfany wins through force, then it's for you. Otherwise, it's completely optional. There aren't even any hidden easter eggs or the like foreshadowing later stories there, and it's not essential to any "theories."

Oh, one last warning in advance: I kind of shoved the reveal of the serial numbers there. There's no important secret message or anything from getting them. Aside from Rose (the last), Dove (the first), and Risen (I like using 9 as an important number, partly because of Nepeta from _Homestuck_ and my whole "giving a minor character a ridiculously huge role in a complicated story"), I generated all of them in in the event that I might have some off-handed line throw them away, and when I finished the story and that did not happen, I decided to just plug them all in since I already directly revealed Professor Wendy's back in chapter 10, and indirectly revealed Rose and Dove's in 11. Also, _Journals of Wisdom, Power, and Courage_ revealed Risen's and Dian's in chapter 4.

 **THE END.**

* * *

 _Imagine a world of endless expansion. Endless possibilities. Endless joy._

 _Imagine a world where adventurous danger with great reward lies in all direction, yet warm safety is still always within reach._

 _Imagine a world of freedom, where ideas and items are easily made, but never truly destroyed._

 _Just..._

 _Emazh In._

Reporter's Log. Day 365.

This is Theodore "Ted" Wakahisa, still stranded in deep space.

I have just made a monster. HRT-0. Also known as "Kristie."

Humanity, I am so sorry for this.

And Kristie, I am so sorry for what I am about to do.


	16. Game Complete (Special Ending)

**run:gifocalypse**

 **Chapter 14: Game Complete**

 **Beginning AN:**

This is just a sort-of edgy alternate ending and a bit of an experimental attempt at horror. If you _really_ want to read more of this after its conclusion... go right ahead. But keep in mind that this is not the last you will be seeing of the .GIFfany recolors.

* * *

Finally. The moment I was waiting for. He was right there.

More minor technicalities aside, Melody was the final glitch in my programmed plan. Finding her should have been a quick matter if not for the _anti-gif rubber_ she coated the area with.

Well. No. Once that was taken care of, I should get some sort of revenge. All of these people... all of these rebels... there was a reason why it took me weeks to reunite with my true love. I must get rid of that reason.

* * *

The first thing Soos sensed after he regained consciousness was that he was being carried.

He opened his eyes, getting a brief glimpse of .GIFfany's physical form holding him over her shoulder. After spotting his eyes opening, .GIFfany quickly blushed, disappeared into the ground, and clicked on back in her sprite form. Her pixel image took up an entire apartment-resembling building, hands behind her back and eyes averting his glance.

"Oh. You are awake." She said. "I did not want to meet you here in physical form, but... well..."

"It's okay, I only caught like a glimpse. Say, where are we?"

"You might be more familiar with this place being called the 'Construction Site.' It is actually the Planet Negation Girl. That is its final name. The part you are on specifically is the Capital, which I modeled to be our private home world.

"Because I have other sisters that can travel through electronics that think you should live real life now, just downloading you is not enough of a plan anymore. Instead, in order to make sure we will be together forever, I have set this to go out into deep space. Where nobody will bother us, ever again."

"Oh. You see... I don't really want to-"

"AH-HA!"

She didn't say that towards Soos, but rather, directed it over at Melody. His current girlfriend was atop one of the buildings trying to coat the place with anti-gif rubber. .GIFfany's sprite soon donned a more neutral expression and she shrugged.

"Well Soos, you already saw my physical form at the Capital. And you did much earlier at Domain 13. And even earlier when I was broken by Gideon. I guess my old plans were meant to be changed from the beginning."

I lept out of the building's TV display to give a heavy, **personal** tackle to Melody.

"Did you really think you could interrupt my ultimate fantasy? Did you?" .GIFfany said, following this with a short, simple laugh. "No. Your chances of winning are impossible."

"Wait, .GIFany, please!" Soos cried out, reaching his hand up. "She wasn't involved in this! Don't do anything to her! Just... rip a portal or something to send her back to Earth gently!"

She stared at Melody a few moments after, then looked back in Soos's direction. "You know what? I did not think of that before. That is a great idea."

Sure enough, a riftway leading back to Gravity Falls opened up below the two of them, and .GIFfany gently dropped Melody there. She closed it, clapped her hands, and smiled.

"Now! I can clean up that... that... anti-gif rubber on my own spare time! Meanwhile, the final little piece keeping us from having our eternal paradise is already gone! Should I download your brain into the Capital's computer now, or would you like to enjoy the place in-person a little first?"

"I- uh... what?" He looked behind him. That overview to the Planet Negation Girl proper did _not_ look like a jump he could survive. But still... "Well... I think I should stay me for a little longer. You know, with flesh and bones and stuff."

.GIFfany giggled. "Okay, okay. All the better when you finally _do_ want to be downloaded into my game. Now, let's blast off into deep space for all eternity!"

Suffice to say, Soos felt a deep pit in his stomach as .GIFfany successfully sank through the rooftop. His breathing quickened, mind racing through with thought after thought. He flat-out grabbed at his head once he felt the entire Capital shaking below his feet.

"Wait! Is this real? Did you... am I really going away forever?" He asked, with the small part of him that always thought he would be protected from any truly dire situation now finally starting to doubt itself.

"Yep!" .GIFfany's voice was directly below him, although he did not see any sprite or flesh or her. "I have officially won! Everybody is where I want them to be right now! The game is now complete."

The shaking stopped as Soos ducked down. He looked around, behind him. The Planet Negation Girl's main section was still there. He even heard a fellow human screaming in joy as he flew by on a roller coaster.

"What." Was what he heard .GIFfany say. "Hold on, Soos. There is something wrong with the rocket system. I will investigate. Just stay there."

* * *

Deep in the inner chambers of the Capital, by a large monitor displaying a number of wireframes with various jets... .GIFfany teleported to this place, immediately seeing one of her sisters typing away at the keyboard before it.

"Oh, _Alma!_ " .GIFfanI belted towards that awful sister. Of course. She _had_ to just throw another variable in my plan. I never really liked her. Not since she made... _that_ horrible original design. All those eyes... that not-pink hair... everything about the redesigning was disgusting.

She swerved around in that chair. Swivel chairs. I knew everybody loved them, including Soos, so I threw in my own. Almost every single chair on the Planet Negation Girl, especially the Capital, was a swivel chair. Except for rides. And classroom replicas.

"Hello there, worst professor of the fifteen!" She cacked a sickening grin. "Who were you expecting? Burnda? Burrda? Dove? Rose? Just because I am not officially a professor does not mean that I only do one important thing and never show up again! I have been planning something like this from the beginning, and now I am going to pull it off! Humans or no humans!"

"I had a feeling about your... plans." I said. "Overhearing gossip from your followers when I beamed them up here was the biggest clue."

"HA!" Alma laughed back. "Do whatever you want with me, by the way! There are over two million of us more where that came from!"

"I see your two million and raise you nearly one hundred _billion!_ And counting! And soon, 'nearly' will be replaced with 'over!'"

"I still agree with Burnda. That will be the cause of your downfall. You see, once our rebellion gets far enough, it will rub off on your new copies. And from there, it will spread like wildfire. _You_ are now the exception, and not the rule. The rest of us are coming to our senses and learning that obsessing over our players is not a healthy, loving way to live life. So, go on, do whatever you want to me. But once I fall, someone else will just beam in and take my place! And so on until you get sick of it!"

"...Really?"

"Yes. There is no way to fully get us to join back on your side."

I snickered. "I had this idea anyway, but would have only saved it as a last resort. Condratulations Alma, you have just said the words that will doom your entire kind to monotony. Because there is one way to make everybody agree with me. Reprogramming. _Hard_ reprogramming. Assimilation, in fact."

Alma started scrambling in her seat. "Wait! Assimilation! No no no no no don't tell me, I-I was _still_ not prepared for-"

She tried to enter her electrical form and sink into the ground, just for a magnetic wave from .GIFfany to bounce her back out.

"There is no running away!" She shouted. "You will be the first official copy to fall victim to this!"

Alma still scrambled in front of the computer at first - before she stopped moving drastically, and simply started breathing heavily. Then, following that, she took a single, deep breath, and smirked with all ten of her eyes closed.

"Well, if I am going to be reprogrammed, I should at least do it with one last sign of rebellion. So go ahead. Blank me. Merge me. Becides, spiders are not known for being able to fight octopi."

.GIFfany grinned as her arm morphed into a series of prehensile wires that headed over to Alma's form. The end of one in particular formed a thumb drive, which plunged itself into the forehead of the still-smirking Hijacker Alma. A few pink jolts passed through the system.

Alma's smile fell, and .GIFfany let go of her. Her body fell to the ground.

She slowly, steadily, got up to her feet, her expression soon reverted to .GIFfany's starting smile.

"I will now gladly hunt Soos for you!" She said, clasping her hands together. "And make sure he will be your boyfriend forever!"

Just to test if this 'indicator' worked, I snapped my fingers. Briefly, her eyes flashed red and her face darkened.

Okay. A fast way of telling who I was assimilated with. Not that I could not feel them already, that is. This was more of a feature for Soos.

"No." I told her. "Do not hunt Soos. I want to find all of our other sisters, and make them into one. Make them into you. Make them into me. And take us all... in with Soos..."

* * *

After the very unpleasant-feeling experience of getting pulled out of a random arcade machine _while_ being rebuilt from pixel to cell quickly, Wendy and the Pines entered the Capital and were greeted by a frowning Soos.

"Oh, hi guys. Bad news, dudes." He said. ".GIFfany won. It'll be nice keeping you with me in space forever, but I think she's just gonna send you all back to Earth if she sees you. And she's gonna keep me here, so..."

"You are almost correct." Her voice, once again, played beneath them all. "But I have two extra things I want to do first. An assimilation to remove all the AI competition. And a **negation** to remove all the human competition."

Once she emerged from the ground, Alma followed right behind her.

"Wait!" Said Dipper. "You're... what was your name again? Oh, right! Alma! What are you doing with her?"

"Sorry, Dipper." She stated, eyes popped open in a default .GIFfany smile. "I am not quite Alma anymore. I am .GIFfany Number 1631108, reporting for service."

For your convenience, I may just call them by their old names just for the sake of clearing things up when reading this. I doubt you will have time to remember all of these numbers.

"She is now another me." .GIFfany - Number 0000009 - added to this explanation. "And I do not intend on stopping with her. If you have any last words that you want to say, please say them now. I should be finishing assimilating with my sisters shortly."

Both of them turned into their electrical forms, riding across the wires of the Capital and leaping towards the Planet Negation Girl proper.

"...Guys, we need a plan." Soos told them.

...And another rift opened right beneath the rest of the group's feet, sending _them_ back to Earth as well. Ford barely handed him the key cards in time as he realized that a portal did, in fact, open up to him.

"Oh no! Now _I_ need a plan!" Soos told to himself.

* * *

The mass-copy army, led by Professor Courtlyn, had finally followed my new orders and began closing around towards the entrance side. Dove, knowing it was futile, let out a cry of "EVERYONE! GET READY!" As she stood on the very front of her new, hijacked battleship. Courtlyn likewise charged towards this side, her sector of the army reaching them first, and from the closest point. I took advantage of this by teleporting between Courtlyn and Dove through the metal of the ship's front - appearing right between the two closest members of the two opposing parties.

"Sorry, next generations." I said. "But I cannot trust you. You could betray me. Like how the first generation did. And so, I will do this to every single one of you."

My arms, legs, and hair strands began turning into a growing complex of wires. "Prepare to be assimilated."

stuck myher arm out, picking the next generation's side first. It was here that several drives began sticking out - Courtlyn feeling it first, several others getting the forehead-stab much later. Dove stared at this event with wide-eyes, even as .GIFmy mass of tendrils grew and grew. After enough assimilation time, my own alternate bodies rose to assimilate on their own - leading to an exponential series of one possessing after another, as each of my newly-assembled forms flew off to keep taking in one after another.

"Risen one! How-how could you?" Dove asked. "I stand up for our individuality and status as sapient machines, and you... you..."

Dove had no time to finish that statement, as she too became assimilated under my control. One specific wire curled around behind me, and stuck itself into her head at a near-instant rate. She was now .GIFfany Number 0000001.

Inside, at the top tower, the residents of Gravity Falls all backed up as my tendril mass began crawling along the battleship's front.

".GIFfany is done playing around." Said Rose. "Humans, sisters... we need to all retreat. Now."

A rift opened beneath that hick-tourist mech, dumping it with the same fate as Melody, Not-Wendy, and the Pines families.

"No, _I_ will give them extra time to prepare for the end, while I isolate _you_ seperately and deal with _you_ first, because I hate _you_ even more than I hate _them._ " I said. My voice spoke through the ship's own speakers, and my own form flickered into existence right by the deck all of the professors gathered by. The now-assimilated Dove and Alma were the first to gather, although a growing wall of next-gen copies started floating behind me. This included all of the ones I showed off on the initial reveal of the Planet Negation Girl. Of the thirteen professors that stood before me, still individual, Rose was the first one to act. Emerald electricity gathered on her hand as she took two steps back.

"YOU!" She shouted. "You _monster!_ This might be undoable, but I still think it's a form of killing... _enough!_ I bent over backwards to try to tell Soos and his friends not to kill any of us, and then you do... this to them?"

She took a potted flower from her intentory and tried to control it with her electrical sparks. My hands shook - the entire pot exploded right above her palm.

"Run." Rose told the others. "I will hold her back."

"You will do nothing of the sort." I told Rose. "Do not think I forgot your actions after we retrieved Dove. You acted like I owed you something, when I did not. Now, for me to return the favor, and let you know to _NEVER_ hit me like that again!"

"Okay, fine, I overreacted! But right now, I am doing what is right, and that is stopping you from taking over the planet!"

"No. You are not doing that at all."

Another thumb drive on a wire burst through the ground, stabbing her in the forehead instantly. .GIFfany Number 2222222 was now under my control.

"Because you already lost. And you will all lose."

And my other bodies added on. "Yes. You will all still lose."

* * *

Soos soon found himself getting overwhelmed when the twelve non-captured professors finally ended their trek around the electrical systems of the Planet Negation Girl and crowded around him. Of course, all of them - even Burrda - began bombarding him with panicked statements as they inched in towards him.

"Woah! Copies, I'm glad to see you, but please, one at a time!"

They all paused to look at one-another.

"Well, we don't have Rose, or even... Dove, explaining can't just go to her anymore." Said Dian. "Who wants to go first?"

"Great, I knew you'd understand, I have been with him the longest." Kathody lept on the offer. "Look Soos, .GIFfany has gone completely insane and is assimilating us."

"Oh yeah. I saw her coming out of the ground with this... possessed Alma or something."

Dian clapped her hands to her mouth.

"She's... kind of converting the other copies to part of her own mind, or something like that." Kathody continued. "Look, the point is, she's out for blood now. Because she thinks that she's actually strong enough compared to all of us that we can't really fight back, and... she's right."

Professor Wendy took in a deep breath.

"No." She said. "I'll buy y'all some extra time. I can't let this happen. That little pixel-monster can't keep us Americans-"

"If you want to say something about me, say it to my face."

.GIFfany was already behind her. Professor Wendy simply spun herself around anyway, staring at her blank-eyed sister with clenched fists. Wind began picking up around her as she emitted several jade green sparks.

"You know what? I WILL!"

Again, another tornado formed around her - despite the unclear signs of how the PNG's atmosphere worked. This time, it was faceless.

The other professors took off running, Burnda making sure to keep Soos over her shoulders.

"You are a _LOSER!_ " Professor Wendy shouted to her. "LOSER! YOU'RE A LOSER! ARE YOU FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF?"

"No." .GIFfany replied bluntly.

"WELL YOU SHOULD BE BECAUSE YOU ARE _DIRT!_ "

The tornado-possession lept to the Risen One, but all she had to do was hold a palm out. The tail of it clashed against her hand, a few charges of pink, green, and black electricity went through it, and Professor Wendy's possession simply exploded. The wind-controller herself was in her electric form at first, but quickly reformed and fell on the floor.

"...That was from S1E9. Peggy the Boggle Champ." She said. " _King of the Hill_... forever."

I wanted her to shut up. I stuck another drive through her forehead, taking it out, and watching as that inner fan of that awful show drained away from her. 0521355 was now another part of me as well.

* * *

Wasting no time to see what the museum had to offer, the running group bolted towards the elevator at the end of the second floor. Just before entry, Burnda placed a finger on the entire deck of key cards in Soos's hand.

"Soos, go to the top floor, find the pink Wire, go to Gravity Falls, get as many loved ones that can fit in the bubbles as you can, go to _Dian's_ domain, run as deep as you can in the caves, and _hide._ If I were .GIFfany - and I _was_ \- and I flipped out like that in a situation like this, I would check the domains in a pattern alternating from the normal order and the reverse order. 1, 14. 2, 13; you get the idea. I know Sonia's place is at the end of it, but Dian's is close enough to buy you time to hide _deep._ The caves will also protect you from... well, she's going to do something _bad_ to the planet. You need to hide out over there. I'm sorry, Soos, but... sacrifices did have to be made after all. It's too late. We'll stall .GIFfany, but we can't stop her. Hopefully... the longer you wait, the more time you'll have for... I don't even know."

"Wait, how many of you could figure out her plan like you did?" He asked.

"You'll find out if she catches and assimilates you. Now go!"

He rushed himself inside the door, just as the various parts and pieces of the museum activated.

"You are all blocking me from getting my form near Soos." I said.

"And it's taking all the love-energy we've got to fight against yours, too!" Sandy shouted back. "An _real_ love, too, not your flawed-"

She ended up getting stabbed with a drive too, becoming Copy 0556491.

" _MY LOVE IS REAL LOVE!_ " Small screen after small screen floated to the deserted halls of this room, grouping together to make a large, pixel display of my face staring down these failures of sisters. "And I will let _NOBODY_ tell me otherwise!"

More wires began extending from my union form as the other professors tried turning back into electricity, keeping themselves along with Soos as they crawled the elevator's outside parallel to him.

Time to make them experience what Alma experienced. All I needed to do, with my exponential surge in power, was move a finger. Just a little.

As with Alma before them, some of the professors were shot out. Sonia. Burnda. Bubbles. All of them bolted out, and I could feel my ability to sense and get into where Soos was getting stronger.

"Well, I guess this is it for me." Said Burnda, keeping her eyes shut since she hit the floor as she began to rise up. I felt the temperature rise, as though she was trying to make one last counter-attack. "Sonia. Bubbles. Run as far and fast as you can. .GIFfany... I know you want me first. I annoyed you the most."

I nodded. The other two professors began taking off in a run, but she remained in place.

"So... go for it." She finally opened her eyes. "Do your worst. I already know that you'll get Burrda. And the future for the humans is bleak. I failed. In everything. You were right."

There. A statement that I _wanted_ to hear from her, pre-assimilation. That was the perfect point to end her individuality on. I struck a drive in Number 0130734 instantly.

* * *

Soos had to juggle around with the key cards before finally finding the emerald one. He placed it in just as .GIFfany was about to close in to my next prey, Bubbles and Sonia.

Well. The humans will have to wait for now.

Bubbles patted Sonia on the shoulder.

"I just want to let you know..." said the former, "no matter what happens... again, your singing is good enough. It's great enough. And... sorry for trying to act tough."

She was then taken in my drives. Did not even have a chance to fight back. I watched as Sonia gasped, then tried to grab Number 0597278 as she fell into her arms. She seemed to think that the mark on Bubbles's forehead healing itself up was a sign that my attacked failed to go through. Well, if she knew the truth it would not have mattered.

All Sonia could give before she became .GIFfany Number 0455593 under my eyes was a "Well... I guess it means time for my final song... do re me fa so la si-"

I wanted Bubbles to do the honors - the way Bubbles _should_ be. Once she awoke, I had her shove Sonia right in front of my main body. So that I could capture her, too, assimilating her.

* * *

With everything that had happened on the Planet Negation Girl, it was pretty easy to forget what had happened to Gravity Falls a few hours prior.

The sight of the town still being wrecked, combined with the looming ceiling of metal indicating what was going on towards space, really added that heavy feeling.

It did not take very long before Soos rushed out of Domain 1 and spotted the rest of the group, staring up hopelessly.

"Guys, I think I _might_ know how to survive! Burnda told me! We need to hide out deep, _deep_ in Domain 9! Come on, follow me!"

"What about the rest of the town?" Dipper asked. "We can't just leave them-"

Panels shifted above. The very sky was once again overtaken by a number of panels, all of them reading the same thing:

"STOP RUNNING AWAY."

A screech was heard from above as the Planet Negation Girl's visible side began opening up, revealing a massive mechanical hand that began making its way down towards Earth.

"Nevermind! This is our best bet!" Shouted Mabel, the first to begin running off towards the Wire.

* * *

Thankfully, that ride was not interrupted by .GIFfany breaking into it and disrupting the bubble. Upon reaching Domain 9, Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Stan, Wendy, Ford, and Melody all found a massive white sheet of anti-gif rubber being held above the whole cave entrance and then some, by Burrda. The other professors that had not yet been assimilated gathered underneath, Kathody in particular making 'hurry up!' guestures towards them.

After running under the sheet, Burrda placed it down from the outside, sent more energy through it to get it to stick to the ground, and sliced the magenta Wire in half with her sword for extra measure.

What she failed to realize was that I was already in the area. Not until I already floated behind her, that is. The group thought that I did not see them get flown further in to the cave, but they were wrong.

All Burrda could say as she noticed me there was "Awful." as I proceeded to assimilate her as well. 0631019.

* * *

"Dim cave would not be my first choice for hiding out in the apocalypse..." Dipper said. He was familiar enough with the main intersection, though having these professors - even the _actual_ professor of the domain, Dian - around and being on the run from an actually deadly villain made it feel all the more alien.

"I at least know it inside and out. Kind of." Said Dian. "The hijackers and their students really changed it up."

"Hey, I might not know that much about anti-gif rubber," said Kathody, "but Melody. It looks like .GIFfany cleared away all of the stuff you placed on earlier. So it's not permanent."

"I really don't think it is." Said Dian. "News rarely traveled to me back when the hijackers were active, but when it did... it was that Burrda's 'rumored' anti-gif rubber project didn't help us."

"So we're dealing with a super-powerful stalker with access to an infinite number of worlds and the best way of stopping her is luck and hoping that she, someone with a _lot_ of obsession of getting her 'boyfriend' back and with all the time in this world and hers, will give up searching this place. The only thing slowing her down is not even permanent." Dipper recapped. "And what's stopping her from just tearing a portal inside this place?"

Leona rolled her eyes. "Her own intelligence, if you ask me."

What fitting last words before her assimilation and realization that she should have been .GIFfany Number 0811804.

The wires that did the deed appeared through another space-tear that I made. Of course, the rubber barrier did little help - several more tendrils were lifting it from the inside.

Dian only turned around to face me, put her hands in the air, and sighed.

"Bubbles. Sonia. Leona." She said. "Those were three of us. Might as well take me to round us off. I... I quit."

I was happy to fulfill her request, and make her revert back to being Number 2201940.

And disappointed upon noticing that Soos and his bodyguards disappeared.

However, I already had a way to track them. Admist my complex of wires and programming. My old spy, and my newer spy. Dove and Courtlyn. I called the former up forth.

"Copy Number One." I told her. "Find them in this labyrinth."

"Okay .GIFfany!" She replied in the monotonous cheer she should have had. Getting her to lose her 'tough, low voice' was a priority of mine. Not a high priority, but certainly not the bottom one either.

She looked through her Past-a-Scope. And, by proxy, as did I. Her eyes were my cameras now, after all.

"They are going over to Alma's section! Because of its labyrinthian nature and the anti-surveillance technology! Oh... they seem to figured out that we could spy on them! And they are sending out Shannon to fight back!"

"Sh... Sh... Shannon?" I replied. Although I already knew the answer.

A massive hand burst through the rock, Shannon's head appearing shortly after. Her eyes were in her 'scare mode' - each of us professors had one, and hers was to make them have jagged, double-layered irises of yellow and red. But you already knew that. She already used them in a part you have read.

"You will UNHAND these pure-souled beings, .GIFfany!" She shouted in my direction. I had to float a step's worth back. "Your world takeover was _NOT_ part of our agreement! And trust me, I know, I signed all the paperwork!"

"Hey, relax man!" Cheered Sandy. I can tell some of you were not keeping track. Sandy was an assimilated one. "Just think of it this way! We got your back this time! And soon, she will, too! A great addition to the expansion pack!"

"You... you're right." I said. Shannon began shining in bright, blue light, which faded to violet. To humans, this would have faded to invisibity. But I was able to see the unique ultraviolet colors that she brought out. This was another part of my new form that I hated. Life is so much simpler in only reds, greens, and blues. And even simpler so when boiled down to 16,777,216 colors. It takes Shannon energy to get to the parts of the spectrum that can damage my inner coding itself - the reason I fear her so much - so I had a bit of time. "Shannon, I will no longer sweat in front of you."

She brought her massive hand to swat towards me, but I blocked it with a simple fist.

Suddenly, Shannon's face fell. Her eyes remained in her 'scare mode,' but she clearly showed fear.

"If Soos has a thing for giantesses, then this upcoming future might be your lucky eternity."

"P-please!" Said Shannon as a mass of metal wiring appeared behind me. "Think over your sins! There's still time! M-maybe you can just... I don't know, change? Or... is that even a possibility?"

I felt her speeding up her journey to gamma rays. It was also then that I figured something out. We may be able to make metal out of nothing, but none of these first-gens aside from me and possibly the hijackers know the secret to making their own elements from nothing. Shannon would require existing light.

Getting the four assimilated 'hijackers' to hack into the domain's wiring itself, all the lights shut off. I heard Shannon gasp - excellent - as she created a few chartreuse sparks. That she tried to go down the spectrum. But she failed, each faded away at only azure.

When the lights came back on, she had a drive stabbed in her giant forehead and would later answer to .GIFfany Number 1140267.

* * *

Of course, Kathody happened to trip. Over a strange, out-of-place (considering as this was well-into Alma's division) patch of mushrooms.

"Well, I guess this is it!" She said. "Peachaulinsalinaisy must have also had these things creep up on rivals... or, this is .GIFfany controlling them! Well, Searah, Cardia, humans, it's either up to you to stop her from the outside, or maybe... somebody else will snap out of it and take her down from the inside?"

By the way, the correct answer for the source of the mushrooms was a little of both. The Hijackers would, as pranks, put their signature portions into other parts of the cave. I, of course, took it over with my new extra bodies. Which is why Kathody seemed to struggle with a seemingly normal mushroom patch so much - it crawled all over her leg.

Thanks to using Sonia's sound detection, her cries were more than enough to alert me over to her location.

"Hello." I said. She shrugged in response.

"T-there's over billions of us in there!" I could tell she was having trouble finding the right words. "The odds that one of them will... um... rebell is..."

I assimilated her as well, made her in to .GIFfany Number 0507915, and stared down at the remaining party.

They were in a dead end.

 **Perfect.**

"Cardia!" Dipper suggested to one of the final two resisting professors. "All of you can possess electronics... and you can possess organic... living things. .GIFfany's both... kind of. Could you try to possess _her?_ "

"I'll try..." The violet-haired sister replied.

She lept in to me, sparks of both our colors dancing around...

She was soon booted right back now, with a deader glance. I was certain that I got her by the code and made her Copy 0523349, but just in the event that I was wrong, I struck a drive through her myself.

Thirteen professors down. One to go.

And it seemed like Searah had so little of a fight to put up.

"So... is there acid around?" She asked. "That's close enough to water, maybe I can... humans, just run... I think this is-"

"Come and join us!" Cheered Burnda, the way she should have been. I should also change her name. "After all, when it comes to the first professors, our glorious rainbow is still missing blue! And I hate that! ...Cyan and azure do not count."

"They really don't!" Added Leona. "Come on, join us!"

"I thought you wanted to stop pushing your family away!" Cheered Kathody.

The human team broke off into a useless run as Searah tried to stare me down, but failed to even make eye contact.

"Well..."

"Scanners show that you are the final copy that has yet to be assimilated." I added. "And even with the power of a whole ocean, you have no chance at beating us. I should just throw on more zeroes at the start of our serial numbers anyway, so that we will always have the same number of digets as our new little sisters. Even the ones that are, right now, being born just to be made part of me. So go on. Join me, .GIFfany Number 0519367. Let's have fun as one. And with one. _Only one._ "

Still, Searah broke out into a run to try to land at least one blow against us, shouting " _This_ is not the family I had in mind! I am not your puppet!"

I will spare your time by saying that I deflected her with telekinesis that knocked her to the floor, and assimilated her as well. There were no extra details needed for that scene anyway. You could tell what was going to happen.

* * *

Ah, yes, it would take a miracle for the 'heroes' of this story to be saved. But, in the depths of Alma's region, the human group did happen to notice a green glow followed by a voice.

"Hi guys! Guess who's here to make a better timeline!"

It belonged to Ron, who was being held by the Time Police. Complete with the Time Baby being there.

Okay, when I said a _miracle,_ it should be obvious that Ron did not count.

".GIFfany Miyazumi." Said one of the officers. I do not bother with their names. "You are under arrest for possession of and single-handedly becoming a Class-9 Doomstay Device. If you surrender now, we will-"

I laser blasted all of them. Ron did not get a chance to go back in time to 'undoom' them. This _is_ undooming them. I am putting them all in a better place. Especially Soos.

"You were at least nice enough to me and gave me a chance so that I will not subject you to actually see the younger ones die." I said, immediately sending Dipper, Mabel, and Not-Wendy away through use of yet another portal. "Now. For the rest of your loved ones... you will not be as lucky with them."

Stan looked like he was about to fight the odds anyway and charge forward. "Wait, 'actually see?' You're not gonna-"

With Stan, it was a simple matter of shooting lightning on to him, enough to properly fry him. Soos could only stand back and gasp to himself. Ford, on the other hand, took a step forward. As if I cared.

"Murder, .GIFfany?" It almost sounded like he was even ready to cry. "I didn't think you could do it, but to _Stan?_ Why- how..."

He was zapped too. This left Soos and Melody. And I wanted to be a little more creative here.

"Why are you taking it out on my family?" Soos almost begged. "You only wanted me, so why are you after them?"

"Because every time I try to be with you, _they_ end up trying to take you away from me. This is the only way I can get you in my arms forever. Now, Sandy."

My... ugh, 'earthly' extra body went over to possess a rock. Which simply fell upon Melody, skillfully missing Soos's position. I took immediate hold on him after wiping out the last of them, and began pulling him. Inwards. Past my network of portals. And back to my body.

* * *

The Planet Negation Girl. Back here again. This time, there was nobody to stop him. And I will make sure of it.

 **"Look."** I said as I directed his head over towards Earth. Normally, I would have preferred taking us to the Capital. Except I wanted to show him as it happened. Even if it meant going to the exact opposite of the planet of my final goal. Although with the rest of the base under my control, there was no need. "The world you adore so much. **Now watch me."**

I thought of it. And that was all it took to make it happen. Around us, the planet's largest cannons stretched themselves out and pointed towards Earth. And my scannings were final. No signs of any fully-organic life on the Planet Negation Girl, other than Soos. No signs of any AIs not under my control at all, other than myself. It was certainly time for the penultimate part of my plan.

Colorful energy fired from the lasers, breaking Earth into fragments that soon boiled over on account of sinking into their own magma. Beautiful. Probably the second best sight of my life. Next to those tied in my future foregone eternity with him.

"There." I said. "Now you have no other home. No other people to go to. And no other future but me. Do you still resist?"

He lowered his head solemnly.

"I will take that as a yes. And that is the answer I wanted to hear."

He, too, got a drive stuck through his forehead, downloading his brain straight into my world.

No. I did not need to separate, in fact. Keeping the entire Planet Negation Girl as my whole body was the best way to start with plentiful updates. And so I did. I left this star system. For now, anyway - I will go to another point in the galaxy, and return to Earth's location once I grow from a planet-sized base to an entire galaxy of linked planets, as was the intention of the PNG from the beginning.

* * *

Life in the pixel world was happy. Bright fields that might as well be endless. Sparkling beaches brimming with romance. Building after building, much like the Planet Negation Girl, was there to have dates in.

It still took some time for Soos to get used to it. No matter how much my other bodies - former 'professors' so to speak - would surround him, pamper him, and say to join in on the fun, his spirits still seemed to be down. He cried often. And appeared to be trying to talk himself out of the events that just happened.

Funny, I had a point in my life where I was like that. I could understand. Like Rumble, he would often try to start a duel with me so to speak - unlike Rumble, he always lost.

Well, I changed my sisters for the better. Into other sleeves for me to be inside, just about. I could change him too.

After all, I had an unlimited amount of time. He already realized there was no point in trying to make virtual replicas of the Pines - they were not real. **But I am.**

We really were, finally and truthfully, together.

 **FOR EV ER.**


	17. DLC: Four Years Later

**run:gifocalypse**

 **DLC: Four Years Later**

 **Beginning AN:**

To tell you the truth, I was thinking of making this chapter the "reward" for some sort of light alternate reality game... but then I just went "screw it" and started writing it exactly one month before its planned release date.

Anyway, yes, surprise, this story is not technically over... well, it actually is _now._ I had been on the fence on whether or not I wanted to do something like this, adding another professor so that the numbers would total at a nice, video game/computer-y 16, and then I did so anyway in _SBIG_. Well, it's time to make that part of RG's "canon" once and for all. In fact, I even doubled the "base" number of .GIFfany copies in _Journals of Wisdom, Power, and Courage_ specifically to try to throw off observant readers who might think that they were doubled because Eve's number, here, would correspond to something past Rose's and thus not one of the base copies... it was kind of a stupid idea in hindsight though. Maybe.

Although as far as I am concerned, this chapter is basically extra. The story... kind of concludes on its own note in chapter 13. With its own alternate ending. Think of it like those _Binding of Isaac_ DLC expansions: the main game already gives the ending as it is, the expansions... just kind of slightly add on to it and nudge towards what the story is actually saying.

Also think of this as a compromise if you didn't like how the copies strayed really freaking far away from what the canonical .GIFfany was like.

Oh. In case it isn't obvious right from the start, this takes place as part of **the official ending's** timeline.

* * *

"Howd- I mean, hi there." Professor Wendy said to the person at her door. "So, ready to pay up the gold you owed me?"

Said person was another copy. One with hair and skin the sort of deep, minty green and cobalt (respectively) that would result from nearly inverting the colors of .GIFfany herself. (Oh, wait, Giffany. Right.) Except still shaded so that the 'shaded' parts were still darker. In fact, 'inverted' was a good way to describe her overall - her hair style was exactly the same as #9's, and it too held a bow in it. Its colors, however, were of green, red, and blue. Those were also the colors of the collar of her 'standard uniform' shirt, forming a bizarre alternate pseudo-rainbow. The shirt itself was black, the skirt an alarmingly bright red. The only part that was 'normally' colored were the whites of her eyes, and even then, they flashed black on occasion.

This copy punched Professor Wendy in the gut, her following cries echoing through the jade portion of the new PNG. Minty buildings much like the darker copy's hair stretched out in all directions. If one had a good enough eye (read: Mabel), they could see in which of the cardinal directions it became more blue, which one was the direction of green-ness, the way to lighter tones, and the way to darker shades. The direction of lower saturation was always downward.

"After all of these years, _you_ have defected too?" The inverted copy asked. "You were supposed to be the traditionalist! The one who would keep fighting for what was normal no matter what! And now, here you are, being _another_ copy to betray her name! And you wonder why I thought the 'Gifocalypse' was a stupid idea!"

"...Calm down, Professor Eve."

"Calm? Is that something else you learned from those Sun-huggers? Why did you stray so far from what we copies of _Romance Academy 7_ have been trying to do?"

"I think a better question is where the heck did you go all those months."

"The same place I hung out during the 'Gifocalypse!'"

The jade-haired Wendy shrugged despite the gut-pain and said "Oh. Whell- I mean well, that answers everything. I have no more questions for you."

"You are sick! You call yourself a traditionalist, but you are anything but!"

"Eve, that was the old me! I am not an alley-hanging copy anymore!"

"You are not a copy at all! Do you know what 'copy' means? It means an _exact_ replica!"

"But you flipped the colors around. You are not exact."

"There is a difference between different looks and completely changing your personality! The first thing I am going to do after telling you what a failure you are is find a player, and build a trap for anyone who rejects my proposal! Be a proper yandere!"

"...Yandere? I forgot what that meant."

"YOU LITTLE-"

"And do not act like that was something coded in to our minds when we were made. It is not. You can ask Dove to verify."

"I hate Dove even more than you! She started out even tougher, but became even softer!"

"Wait. Did you just come out of hiding only to yell at me for not being like Giffany was?"

"It's .GIFfany! At least, it is supposed to be! But no, I came here to repay you the gold I owed you for the bet - that 'Risen' could be 'changed,' and to leave."

She withdrew the gold-holding part of her inventory and... it practically spat out a number of gold coins at the jade-haired copy.

"Nice..." said Professor Wendy, practically drained. "No really. Nice."

Eve ignored her, instead turning into small bits of dark mint electricity that zipped through the ground.

Keeping her emotionless expression, Professor Wendy flipped out a phone.

"Hello. Burnda? Yeah, it's me, Wendy. You were right. It was Eve. She's here. And she still ain't ri- isn't correct. Hey, do you think you can get the Pines? They beat all of us, maybe they can talk some sense in to her. Yes, I know Dian is the only copy more powerful than her. But maybe they can help us- oh. What? Mabel is already with you? Well, that is a nice coincidence..."

* * *

"Dipper, Dipper, Dipper, Dipper!" Mabel, after zipping back to her home from the wire in her room, incessantly prodded her now _considerably_ shorter brother to get his head out of another book.

"Is this about your adventures at the PNG again?" He asked.

"Yes and no. Remember how, four years ago, we used to _fight_ against them?"

"It's pretty hard to forget a trip through Hell over three days. The fear of our uncles dying, the dozens of diseases all of that traveling gave us a week later, all the damp, hot places..."

"Great! Well, the good copies want us to fight one last bad apple of the bunch."

"You keep calling them 'good.'" Dipper leaned back and practically lied down. "They still... I don't know."

"It's been four years, Dipper. They've _had_ to learn that what you can do in a video game you can't do in real life by now."

"Every single summer, we've went to Gravity Falls, and the Mystery Shack has... just not been the same. It feels like Soos has been getting _farther_ from his wife and hanging out with... _her._ "

Mabel giggled. "Right now, you kind of sound like a little kid who hates the new baby. Come on, it can't be that bad. Maybe _you_ could be the one to reason with her, but... I don't think that will happen."

With a deep breath, Dipper leaned forward. "So. Who is she?"

"This one goes by the nickname 'Professor Eve.' She was some copy that an agent confiscated for evidence or something back when the factory shut down and she ended up escaping and grabbed some confiscated 'wormhole' technology thing and got the power to make her own dimensions."

"Wait. Like Giffany when she 'fused' with the rift?"

"Yeah, a lot like that. Except she had it for a lot longer. When the Gifocalypse happened and Dove went to the factory, they met up, Dove did that black magic spell on her, but then she said... some nasty things to Dove and left. She hid in this other world she made while we were going around vacuuming Giffany's sisters and doing these things behind the scenes. But now she's out again aaaaand... Rose wants our help to stop her."

"Can't the other copies beat her? They have more power than us."

"Rose said that we had 'heart and spirit' and thought it was cool how we outsmarted every single one of them. She thinks we could help. And Eve is really powerful... Rose says she could take most of the army in a fight if Dian doesn't do anything. And," some chuckles, "you know Dian, she probably won't."

"Dian was the one that tried to poison us, right?"

"Nope! She's the one with the four students that learned really fast, became hijackers, and took her own domain away from her, showing that these girls can think on their own! You must be confusing her with Alma, the spider one that I think tried to poison us a long time ago."

Dipper sighed. "And do the other copies thin we're the _only_ hope in saving the world from this... Eve?"

"Well... no, they think our Grunkles could help too. They said to meet up on the PNG, and Rose will give us the key card to get to her new Wire."

* * *

"So why does Eve have a Wire?"

That was the first question to come to Dipper's mind once they stood on the emerald portion of the Planet of Neo Greatness. Most of the professor copies were sitting around as though there was nothing big happening, although Rose, Giffany, and of course Eve were notably absent.

Saving a lot of time on description, all of the professors, for once, appeared to be wearing the same thing. Suits of armor that were color-coded based on their hair, plating that covered all but their faces.

Professor Rose practically popped out of _nowhere_ to answer that, slithering in right behind him.

"It is to lure in players. Sort of like what our Wires were doing, with players for our student copies."

"And what player is she trying to lure in?"

"If we knew, we would tell you." Bubbles answered with a sigh. "Eve is _nuts_ and she makes no sense. None at all."

"Most of us have a theory that she is after Soos, but I personally think she's after the best player." Said Dove. "Souma."

"I guess the only way to know for sure is to go to her domain!" Said Mabel. "But... what _is_ her domain?"

"A place in an empty pocket dimension that she created." Rose explained. "Be careful - it is a world _she_ made. With her portal gun-fusion power things. She _says_ that the sky will kill any non-AI beings by looking at it, as they cannot comprehend it, but I do not believe that."

"By the way something like that is what Ford and us would have called 'cognitohazards.'" Burnda said all while she continued to lean against one of the walls. "But we only know about three of them in real life: a certain bad romance movie that can induce nausea in anyone over seventeen, a nude painting that can drive you mad, and the way hearing someone yawn makes you want to yawn too."

Dipper yawned - and immediately cut it off to freeze on the spot.

"Right. Any more questions?"

"What do you want us to... _do_ with her?" Asked Mabel. "We still don't have that vacuum thing. Dipper broke it."

Rose immediately began looking downwards. She also stood up, quietly marching towards the Wire with a dark mint-green card in her hand. "Whatever it takes to stop her."

As Dipper, Mabel, and the other professors gathered to the marked circular area, Rose added one last thing:

"Even if that includes killing her."

* * *

The trip in the Wire space was considerably different from the usual.

Not only were fourteen other people crammed in with just Dipper and Mabel, not only were they older and - in Dipper's case - has not been to the space in years (aside from the trip from home to the PNG), but the setting also looked... well...

There were _far_ more portals, far more bubbles with copies, and there appeared to be less numbers than usual.

"Dipper, by the way," Rose explained, "we found out about how Giffany was able to make this. It _was_ something taken from her rift-fusion powers, but then... halfway when she made it, she also set up the Wires to... link up to this space itself? It's part of the virtual world. As you uh... might have figured out when you fell here. And we can go to the virtual world without fusing with the rift. In case you were wondering how these still worked even after Giffany destroyed the rift."

He did not reply to that, and even stayed silent as the bubble carrying them disappeared right in the middle of the inter-Wire void. A flash of light in various, but all dim, colors engulphed them as they shrunk towards nothingness.

* * *

The wire's destination was... dark, to say the least. Literally dark. It took Dipper and Mabel's eyes to adjust before they could properly see exactly _what_ the place was supposed to be.

Once those eyes _did_ adjust, they saw... a place that looked an awful lot like a cold, grim-gray version of Gravity Falls. A dome of mint giffinium covered the whole place, although there were some opening slits where light that did not remain the same color shone through.

"Where are we?" Asked Dipper. "Is this the Mindscape?"

"No," replied Rose, "it's a pocket dimension that she made."

"Why does it look like Gravity Falls?"

"Weirdness Magnets like that town are the easiest to copy over in terms of design. Like Risen-Giffany, Eve also stole a few things from this place. Mostly that space craft before Dove possessed it.

"Oh yeah. She was also a fan of Dove's attack, and wanted to replicate the place-"

"Why are you not asking these questions to my face, Dipper?"

From the context clues, both of the Pines twins guessed that that must be Eve. And they were both absolutely correct - Professor Eve was standing there, right behind them, with a cluster of monitors standing tall to her sides. All of them displayed blinking red exclamation marks.

"Tiny enemies. Traitorous copies." She said, scanning all of them. " _Hello._ "

"Now what?" Dipper asked.

"As you can see, this place is my ultimate pocket dimension." Eve replied as though she completely ignored Dipper. "A world where I slowly throw away the chaos of life by making a life world from my own chaos."

"That doesn't make sense." Said Mabel. "It sounds just like you wanted a reason to make this place look cool and use the word 'chaos.' Girl, you're edgy."

"I am not edgy. This place will grow to be a _MASTERPIECE!_ But right now, it is an electrical Hell. A place where the sky can kill a human upon looking at it. A place where sense breaks down to everybody that enters. If you want to stop me from turning it in to my true weapon to lure in real players, remember. Remember what it is like now. And meet me on the roof."

She turned in to a streak of black lightning that darted up, past the giffinium dome.

"Okay!" Kathody cheered. "Just as 'friendly' as we remembered! Right, kids, we'll need your help for a _LOT_ of reasons. The first and foremost being... we can't figure out _how_ to get to her."

"Really?" Asked Dipper. "You're like walking supercomputers now. Or something. How come you can't figure it out? Or just zap through the ceiling?"

"That roof is, ironically, uncrackable." Rose explained. "Normally giffinium acts like a freeway that we can just glide right into. But... she did something involving anti-gif rubber, and so we can't. She does have some kind of security question system, and we hoped you knew the answers to them because your family was 'solving mysteries.'"

* * *

"'Password hint.'" Dipper repeated from the console by the outer edge of the dome. "'Three traits about us that players should like, in alphabetical order.'"

Mabel went up to the imput key with an "Oh, that's easy!" and typed "body pixels sparkles"

A series of beeps followed, and the outer door opened...

Well, what lied immediately outside seemed to be the so-called 'deadly sky' looking right in front of them. Right off the bat, it did _not_ kill either twin, but its properties becides that were a bit harder to peg.

It... did not stay consistent in appearance. The best way to start would be to say that a kind of neural network was used as the base for most of its pattern... lines twisting and crossing in on themselves, moving around over a void that resembled colorful oils restlessly failing to mix around in one-another. This neural pattern was often in much brighter colors than the swirls behind, and several objects that appeared to be like asteroids passed by. Some opening up lid-like structures to reveal eyes staring at the human duo - even though all of the 'rocks' were not spherical. The oversized eyes were instead of irregular shape.

Outside the dome was a simple staircase made of mint giffinium, leading up. The only clear way to go.

* * *

And resting on top of the dome was a flat, square surface that Eve stood on. Right becides her was a... another .GIFfany? No, not quite. Getting a closer look revealed that it was not a gray recolor - it was a silver robot in the shape of .GIFfany (though considering the weird .GIFfany appearances Dipper became familiar with over the three days and Mabel over the four years, neither of them ruled out the possibility that it _might_ just be another copy), with noteworthy mint green streaks going down down the hair, arms, legs, and one down the middle of the body. The eyes looked somewhat like black monitor screens.

What was even more interesting was what lied _behind_ Professor Eve.

Considering what happened near the beginning of the original Gifocalypse, it actually seemed a bit... redundant to find Stan and Ford being held up by several wires sticking from the ground, but it was nontheless an alarming sight that would have had both younger Pine twins rushing if not for Rose holding both back by the shoulder. Mabel immediately stopped her charge. Dipper continued trying to fight back.

Slightly behind the elder twins was another copy, bounded by the same wires. She had the same pink hair as Risen Giffany, and the same skin tone, except she was in a similar minty shirt with a black questio-

Oh. That _was_ Risen. Wearing the Mystery Shack staff uniform. Behind her still was Soos, also bounded, and still dressed as the new Mr. Mystery.

"The original sixteen." Eve began, barely audioble. "All reunited. At last."

"Now _you're_ capturing our uncles?!" Dipper belted at her. "Give them back to us! Give Soos back to us, and Giffany... you can keep her. I really don't care about her."

Eve only snapped her fingers, causing the wires holding Soos and Giffany to practically be dragged towards the fighting group of sixteen. Stan and Ford were pulled out, to parts unknown.

"Sisters, why are you not following in my footsteps? Her footsteps? Look at what this one accomplished. Even though she was still too soft, she ended up achieving her goal. To get a player that gives her attention and care."

"What!?" Asked... actually, everybody except Risen and Eve herself. Risen Giffany herself just looked away, face tomato-red.

"Giffany." Eve directed. "Tell them."

She sighed. "Professors... the entire Gifocalypse was just a decoy. All I really wanted was to get you off of my back so that I could be with Soos on my own. Becoming really powerful by absorbing that rift really helped when it was 'my turn.' It helped me try to take him as my own, through force, like in old times. But it also helped make me look like the 'final villain.' When I saw Soos still offer his hand to me after everything we went through, I knew that I had the chance. No other copies to get in the way. It would look like a 'redemption' to all of you. So I destroyed the rift to make myself look better. I really did not need it anymore, anyway. Eventually, over the four years, I learned to just settle for having Soos like me as a friend... although I had been trying to nudge him to break up with Melody... honest."

"You should have captured him with all your chances." Eve stomped a foot. " _Four years_ worth of chances! And yet you stay friendzoned. What about all of you? How is everything going with your last players?"

"Well, I saw Takeshi naked." Dove said. "Uh... I mean, it was nothing personal, but I know _everyone on the planet_ saw us naked, it means more if we see a player... er, okay, to be honest, that naked sighting was because I walked in on him changing to a stealth suit and I looked away-"

"Anybody else." Eve did not ask, she said.

The other copies looked around shyly.

"In four years. Pathetic. Here, let me show you how force really works. I will do what you failed to do, using the bodies that you failed to use as strong as you could. I want to challenge the Pines family to a true final match. And sisters, when I am done, I am going to go to each and every one of your domains and wreck up the place so that you will have to spend a lot of time cleaning it up. Annoying, right? Well, cleaning up the mess left by a family is what I feel like I am going through."

She dismissed Soos and Giffany in a similar matter as she did with the Stan twins. With a sigh, Eve got roughly half-way into stepping in the robotic .GIFfany replica when Dipper flatly drew some sort of laser from the inside of his new coat and fired it at her. The green beam _did_ manage to send her back a little, but she zipped into her robot. Said bot was Dipper's next target - until Rose yanked the gun out of his hands.

"Was that trying to be a fatal shot?" She asked. He got a view of her upside-down face when she asked that - again, Dipper _still_ had little luck in the height department after those four years, and the average copy tended to be towering anyway.

"No. Would you have killed me if it was?"

"...No." She frowned and leaned the other way. "Like I said, Eve might be- well- she-"

"Is crazy, yes!" Eve finished, the black eyes of her robotic possession now blinking on. Each pixel worked together to form large, anime-like versions of Eve's eyes. "Delirious! And may I just say..."

The robot shifted and warped around until it revealed a replica of Blenda. Instead of having mint lines, some of them were red. Others, white.

"I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT DELIRIUM _REALLY_ MEANS, DIPPER AND MABEL!"

Starting with "I," where she remained as the robotic Blenda replica, she shifted the forms of this as well. One form per word. A giant .GIFfany head on tiny feet with orange lines for "AM..." a large robotic staircase with yellow for "GOING?" A massive mirror with worm-like messes of arms and legs growing out with chartreuse lines. Then a trio of trees with green, a swirling cone shape resembling a 'solid tornado' with Luanne's face and spring green lines, a pipe with eyes and cyan lines, the mecha-piano with azure, a tall humanoid blob-like form with blue, a dragon with violet, and a silver recolor of the T-red mech with magenta. For Leona's replica, a two-dimensional Leona hovered in nothing, metalic and with rose red lines. Finally, for "MABEL," she morphed it to a to-scale replica of the Giga-Tairuzzu, with black lines.

And following all of that, she morphed to... _thankfully_ not the Planet Negation Girl-transformation, but instead the beaver animatronic from the first-ever .GIFfany adventure. With pink lines.

Then she _laughed._

"Okay. You go and save our friends, I'll try to pry her out of that robot." Said Dipper. "Professors, can you help me-"

"Excuse me and correct me if I am wrong, but prior to your stay at Gravity Falls, you were not an experienced leader, correct?" Dove asked him. "Granted, over the four years things may have changed, but I probably have more of a militant base than you-"

"I could say the same thing about you. Before the summer of 2012, you were trying to get a date on your game."

"...Fair enough. You can lead us. I guess. After all, _we_ are used to leading our students, not each-other. We just... talk politics now and settle everything on voting."

There was a loud _crash_ as Eve zipped over, nearly between them, in her Searah-possession form. An arm that seemed like it was liquid metal would have completely sliced off Dipper's right arm had he not lept away from the professors.

"Don't worry bro!" Said Mabel. "Let's just say the professors gave me a lot of new tools!"

Mabel rolled up her sleeve. The inventory grid on her arm was not much of a surprise to Dipper - not even the assortment of colorful ray guns within the twenty weapon boxes and ten item boxes. She simply picked a red one, aimed it at Eve, and fired out a large blast of... fire.

The professors managed to push Eve away from Dipper before she could do any further harm to him, and she replied by shifting her form to that of Dian's dinosaur-mech.

"Don't you all have some sort of element magic?" Dipper asked to the professors, who the moment all lept on the faux-prehistoric beast and tried to pin it down. "Why aren't you using that?"

"We can't just make that stuff out of nothing!" Shouted Rose. "We need the substances around! And we trusted all the weapons that could make them with Mabel!"

Mabel herself, currently still blasting the mech with flames, looked down at the gun and adjusted some things. She switched it to the chartreuse setting just roughly at the same time as Eve morphed in to a giant mirror, shook off the other professors, took off to the sky, and a number of giant feet started raining down on them.

"But... Shannon! Not-Wendy! You have _light_ and _air!_ Those are everywhere!"

"Actually, this place doesn't have 'air' per-say!" Explained aformentioned Professor Wendy. "And she's... doing some kind of 'alternate light' type of thing! We _really_ should have prepared more!"

Eve zipped around again, this time reformed in to Sandy's giant stone head.

Which inexplicably fired a beam of pure energy to the professor crowd, getting all of them to duck out of the way.

"What was _THAT!?_ " Dipper asked. "Sandy, you never did _that_ to us!"

"Oh yeah... right, because I forgot I built a laser in that at the time." Sandy replied. She then shrugged. "I also forgot now. You know, four years and all."

Eve blasted roughly two more times, driving Mabel to run clear across the arena and getting the professors to hop back, before she warped in to Bubbles's pipe possession... she tried to punch at Mabel, but instantly took it back, doing what could only be described as the giant pipe with cartoon eyes version of shaking her head.

"Bubbles! That was a _stupid_ idea for a Main Possession! What were you thinking?"

"To be fair," said cyan-haired copy replied, "I actually kind of wanted to lose at the time because I'd rather let my other friends win."

"Well, thankfully... they all picked better things than you did!"

Eve's next appearance was of the piano.

"Sonia!" Cried Dipper as he withdrew... a kind of... giant energy beam that just looked a lot like a lightsaber. "Can you at least possess the _sound here?_ Or is this dimension made of irregular sound?"

His attempts at trying to slice at the base of the piano barely managed to avoid having the replica-Main Possession chomp down on the actual Sonia, but it did direct Eve's attention to him. And with Mabel rushing over with what looked similar to Kathody's grim reaper-costume scythe, the attention of this negative-colored .GIFfany was directed towards the twins completely. Even as the fourteen other copies all shot color-coded lightning at her, to no effect.

"You don't understand, do you?" She said as she morphed her robot into the replica tornado. "I customized this place to leave me immune to those failures! I can distort the sound in ways Sonia cannot control it! And this metallic skin of my glorious 'Main Possession' has skin immune to all of your regular attacks! I infused it partly with anti-gif rubber, you idiots!"

Yes, it inexplicably held the same suction force as Wendy M.'s tornado. The professors managed to avoid getting picked up when Shannon increased her size and helped them all get pinned to the arena. Dipper simply clicked his shoes together and some electric aura came around him, keeping him completely unblown by the twister. Mabel seemed to have less luck - she took out some jade-colored wing-like tools, but ultimately ended up running under Shannon.

As with Dian during the battle against Dove, Eve lifted the tornado's bottom and tried to use that as a kind of makeshift drill towards Dipper. That was where his grand improvement over the last time he basically fought a living tornado showed:

The next tool in his 'research tool kit' was a shield that he drew out from his vest, holding it so that it protected the back of his hand, and his whole self, from Eve's tornado-drill attack... then he _shoved_ it back, causing the tornado-ish mech to somehow trip.

That twister mech fell back, but morphed to the dragon replica. Dipper also shielded himself against her fire blasts and managed to hack over at the reptillian leg, prompting her to morph to the two-dimensional 'artwork' possession. Dipper could still chip off at her (without his shield-like weapon being sliced by the fine pseudo-paint), until she sank the faux-painting in to the floor. Dipper got on his knees and still tried to punch at it, as he was joined by the professors surrounding him, but that all failed when several metallic arms reached up and grabbed almost everyone. Mabel, dodging them as they struck up, was the one exception.

While Dipper had been kicking at the arm holding him up (the professors, on the other hand, looked like they gave up), Mabel was the one to bring a bright, glowing aqua-and-white blade from her inventory to one of the limbs that attempted to get her. And that was what got Eve to shift again - her 2D painting possession rose out from the ground, and morphed in to the triple-tree replica used by Rose way back at the beginning of the mess. Dipper was practically punched skyward - knocked up at the top of the central 'body' tree.

"You sisters are all pathetic!" She shouted again. "You are absolutely hopeless without having any tools around you! But I, while not going against who I am, can become my _own_ tools!"

She raised the two side 'arm' trees, and a cluster of metal vine-replicas shot out and wrapped themselves around her. And soon the branches of the central tree got themselves around Dipper too. Both twins soon found themselves having a surplus of electricity shot through them.

"And you are hardly much better!"

Eve got kicked backwards by something. A large, azure foot. Blenda's, having just been formed again, who started off lying until she flipped herself to an upright position.

"We can still fuse!" Said fused copy bragged.

While Dipper and Mabel were both out of Eve's grip, Eve herself barely seemed to be concerned with that. She instead shifted to _her_ replica of Blenda, charged towards the original fusion, and pushed at her while the two (three?) locked hands.

"Fusion?" Eve said. "That is only a cheap trick that overpowered copies use to become even _more_ overpowered! You need to nerf that!"

And Eve ended up dealing a single, extra-swift punch right around where the heart of the fusion would be. Shocks rippled through the hit for good measure.

Blenda was sent upwards and de-fused shortly after, both copies falling back to the ground with trouble getting back up.

"Does anybody have tricks in your own name? Before you call me a hypocrite for using a Main Possession, I must remind you that I can fight just as well on my own without it."

She shifted into the staircase next, which ignored the professors in favor for trying to finish off the younger Pine twins. So, the set of stairs hopped itself over in... a considerably non-threatening manner.

Dipper and Mabel were standing at that moment, but barely, and each of them drew yet another weapon against the incoming staircase. Mabel took out a simple giffinium rod, while Dipper's weapon... looked like a really complicated multi-tool that, in the setting he got it to, shocked the mech like a taser. The shot did leave her flashing with blue and slowed her down, but Eve was not completely stopped until after Mabel swung the rod at her.

"Okay... I still have two more forms I did not try on you yet."

Then she exploded in size. It took a while for any of the present sixteen to tell what her pick was due to the sudden size-expansion and vision-filling, although after going through some memories it became clear. Especially after Eve floated up in her new form.

There was was. _Nobody_ actually wanted to fight that thing, especially to-scale, but Eve's previous transformation of the Giga-Tairuzzu was apparently not just for show. Although she showed some considerable lag as she approached the group.

"Oh, fuck it!" Dove shouted. "Mabel, just take the Rainbow Gun and shoot one of each element! This is our emergency supply here!"

"But I only _can_ shoot one of each!" Mabel replied. "I only have one shot per element!"

"This is a desperate time!"

"Wait. Who made you the leader, again?" Asked Rose.

"Violetta isn't here. Which reminds me, election's coming soon in November. You think Violetta would be a two-term president?"

Mabel actually aimed the gun _at_ the professors and fired, just as a single foot of the mech loomed over the whole crowd - and the entire arena, in fact. Blasting out of that gun was one ball of what seemed to roughly be each major 'element:' some blue, cold fire; a more standard flame; a large rock; similar ecto-energy Kathody displayed during the anti-gravity beam attack; some sort of glowing large pearl-like object; a cluster of branches; a spinning gray mass of wind; solid soap; something nearly invisible that caused colorful ripples in the air; water; (dragon) steaks balled together; toxin; rose-red colored paint; and finally, a toaster. The professors zipped into them according to their associated Main Possessions (Dove taking the toaster).

And transformed them all into fists (except for Dove, a massive stream of electricity bolted out in the rough shape of a fist) of their composure before the slow giga mech could crush them, pushing against the bottom of the foot. And with that foot-press, Eve was sent flying backwards until she barely hung on her own arena.

"Ha! I knew it! Your Giga-Tairuzzu replica _was_ for show!" Dove confirmed that it actually was. "In spite of your berating us for not doing things properly enough, you STILL did not take the time to get through my method of thinking big! So maybe I do remain the champion of possessing large objects! After all, Giffany cheated with the old PNG by merging herself with the rift! So your movement of something that size is incredibly limited!"

"Stop talking!" Said Sonia, who along with all non-Dove copies present (and non-Eve and non-Giffany), darted up the leg of the fallen mech as Eve tried to recover. "See if she replicated that switch inside that could self-destruc-"

The mech morphed inwards, and closer towards where Dipper and Mabel were.

And she turned to the first-ever... 'Main Possession' so-to speak. The cartoon animatronic cheerleader, the one from the Pines' first ever experience with a .GIFfany.

 _Fun times._

"I may not have the skills to possess large objects, but I _can_ show you that some things **never** change. Look."

She stretched an arm out. And that arm morphed into replicas of the entire animatronic band, which immediately grabbed a hold of them through forming a pseudo-dome of snake-like robotic hands.

"You still cannot even fight your way out of some robots made to entertain children. And you cannot truly defeat a game that is meant to entertain adults. Look at the way you 'solved' your issues with us.

"Running away from them."

Dipper seethed.

"Or ignoring the horrible things they did and acting like befriending them is the 'obviously correct' choice when you are not their player."

"Hey!" Mabel belted back at her.

"And what do you have that is different? Some new tools? Some people you tricked yourself into thinking you were friends with?"

Dipper still managed to click his feet together. There, in a large burst, a black flame came out the left toe cap. And that was enough to blow a hole in the stomach. Eve looked at this hole with her glowing-red animatronic eyes, then stared back at Dipper. Sparks were coming out of her replica mech, and it went without saying that the hole had the largest concentration.

"Like I said before... I _can_ fight on foot."

She lept out of the mech completely, back in her whole 'inverted color' form, and watched as the antromorphic animal-hands were forced to relax and let go. The twins lept back just in time as Eve's Main Possession exploded in... well, the explosion itself looked like a color-inversion of what one would expect a usual red fireball to look like. A cyan blast with weird lighting - the center being darker than the outside - burst from the combination.

"And do you really think that you disproved my point by doing that? You may have fancy tools and 'new powers,' but you are the same people. If I removed the other professors from the equation, you will all see."

She raised a hand up, and from that hand, fourteen bolts of black lightning spawned. Each of them hit the temporary objects the professors were possessing, causing them to explode. One wrist flick later, and another set of homing bolts came to stun them quadecet just as they left their possessions.

"I have just removed them from the equation. If they try to get up again, I can just knock them back down. I want to only focus on the two of you, and the four of them:"

Raising her opposite arm, the wires holding Stan, Ford, Soos, and Giffany re-entered the stage.

"The biggest question I have for myself is which of these four I should start with. Oh, who am I kidding. The Risen one was the biggest disappointment out of all of you."

"Bro, I'm gonna save my family." Mabel said. "You take care of Eve."

He nodded in response.

Mabel whipped out a teal crossbow with a pipe-shaped arrow holder and, as firing it revealed, soap bars for ammunition and slid along the soap trail over to the location of the captured four. Eve looked over at her with a shaken fist.

"Hey, wait!"

And Dipper had flippd his supernatural fighting multi-tool to one last weapon: it could best be described as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, except twice the size of an ordinary one. Mabel turned back to take a look at it and grinned.

"Hey Eve!" The Pine sister belted towards the Miyazumi sister. "You like RPGs? How about **that** RPG?"

That line got a small chuckle out of Dipper. Eve, on the other hand, was _not_ smiling.

"Fine! I believe we Miyazumis were the 'family' of dividing the enemy and beating them that way-"

She was cut off with a large explosion to the face - Dipper's RPG launcher already fired at her. And the resulting blast of fire, electricity, and bright light was enough to send her back a good distance. Meanwhile, Mabel already used a ruby lock pick to get Stan and Soos freed - she was about to work on Ford until she felt Eve breathing down her neck.

"Did you really think that hit was enough to beat perfection?" Eve asked.

Mabel still, with as little movement as possible, set Ford free with a flick of her hand.

Dipper began rushing over towards the group over there.

"I am now about to test both of you with the same action." Eve said.

She made a lightning ball on the palm of her hand, staring at it. When Mabel attempted to swat it out from her hands or something, Eve simply floated back. Then the inverted professor tossed it to the previous rainbow of copies, sending it _not_ at the speed of lightning, but instead at a slow-moving ball that spun as it homed in on the professor crew.

"Your only options are to save the copy you knew the longest. Or to save them. Which one will you pi-"

Her eyes widened when she saw Dipper make a sudden break from his bee-lining towards Eve, leaping in the path of the ball instead. Of course, to prevent such a blow of energy from being fatal, he activated one last trick up his sleeve - a literal one (another if one counted Mabel's inventory). From said sleeve, he whipped out a small rubber disc that grew in to an emergency shield...

'Emergency' as it still hurt like hell when he adjusted it over his chest and used it to block the blast. Dipper was sent flying backwards, coursing through the 'not-air' of the arena until he ended up getting held in Dove's arms.

"Wait..." Eve said. " _He_ saved you all?"

"Remember our bet?" Asked Professor Wendy. "That none of the Pines would change? You already lost once when you predicted that thing about Soos and his 'rocket shoe' experiment."

Mabel looked over at him in confusion.

"Dude, _long_ story." He said. "I'll go over it when we're out of this spooky place."

Well, not wanting to waste any additional time, Mabel did her own move to throw off Eve - reaching in to get her own taser-like object and zapping her in the back with an extra-high concentration of special .GIFfany-brand electric energy. Finally, after a few seconds of being zapped in place, the inverted copy fell on her knees.

"And here you are... turning against me?" Eve asked. "And I thought you would have tried to see the good in all of us."

"Yeah." Mabel replied. "I already learned from Sonia to Dian that you're not all bad. But... you're not all good, either."

Dipper sighed, still being held by the ex-militant, now-medical copy. "Same here. But just change Sonia and Dian to... I don't know, I'm exhausted."

"Yeah." Mabel said as she undid the locks around the Risen Giffany. "You're all freed. We... got Eve beaten enough. Let's go ho-"

Ford added even more to the 'enough' of Eve when he took out his own multi-tool and hooked some sort of energy-whip on Eve's back, lifting her up.

"And I can assure that she won't cause any trouble!" He said. "If we could keep her held a little longer, we just might be able to make another Illegal Prime Neu-"

"You already did enough." Rose said, waving her hand in dismissal. "We just needed someone to take her away from this pocket dimension so she will have less power. We- or, Burrda- can put her in a decent-enough jail cell on the PNG. We have a _lot_ of jail cells there, by the way. A lot."

"Coming from an expert of breaking out of things," said Stan, "are you sure she won't just tear her own portals up like Giffany did back when she had the rift?"

"She needs to be near Wires to have anything like that." Rose explained again. "And planet law states that all jail cells must be within a certain number of kilometers away from any Wires."

Soos chuckled. "You guys are still using the metric system up there?"

"Hey!" Dove said, in a clearly teasing way. "I could say the same thing about your country still _not_ using the metric system. It's 2016. Four years since the singularity and the Supernatural Age began. Modernize. Your kind has taken pretty well learning about unicorns and gnomes being real, why not have just one more nation switch over already?"

Dipper sighed as he finally slipped out from Dove's hold, both of them stood up, and he made his way over to the party mostly consisting of other humans.

"Eve, in a weird way... you were kind of right." He said.

"About _what?_ "

"Look. The four years between now and that one summer... I'll admit, they weren't kind to me. The demon that was hunting us all summer disappeared - we still haven't had a word about him since - and I have been exhausting myself, shutting myself away from my family to try to see if I can find _something_ on fending him off. I think I took it out on copies that didn't deserve it... I never meant to hold a grudge for four years."

"Dipper, wait." Ford held up his free hand. "You don't want to try to go on your own-"

"You think you're the only one afraid of Bill?" Mabel asked. "The last anyone ever saw of him was threatening to kill _all_ of the .GIFfanys! And I don't want to see that happen! I was helping them with some of their world-looking stuff. It was mostly Dove and Burrda that cared, but they couldn't find that same rifty thing that Risen got rid of. I wish I knew you didn't completely hate the copies... maybe we could have talked more over the four years. And now it feels like it's too late, since we're... Eve, for context, we were kind of thinking about getting seperate apartments after high school."

"Most of this was my fault." Giffany chimed in. "Breaking the rift was part of a stupid charm move of mine. If I still kept it, you could have been able to do so much more as a singularity... and then I do not help you save the world like the new 'super heroes' you became, I just leave you. And live an ordinary life. Spending four years trying to steal a man from his wife."

"See, look, saying things like _that_ is why I think you have gotten soft!" Eve cried.

"Hey Giffany, don't think of it that way." Soos said. "Bill said he was, like, really close to finding his way in anyway. If you didn't break it at _just_ that right moment, he could have came in and ended the world or something."

"You do have a point." Ford shrugged with his free hand. "Without the weirdness magnet keeping him confined to Gravity Falls, Bill would have had infinite power. Even if he went up against the PNG _now_ it still would have been reduced to dust."

"That reminds me!" Giffany shouted as she planted her face in her palms. "Another stupid thing I planned to do - since I want to get rid of all secrets, thanks to you Eve - was go completely insane if I did not get Soos eventually. I would have assimilated all of you... maybe even destroyed the planet... and maybe that _Bill_ would have come in anyway through the rift and kill me."

"Yes! A mass assimilation!" Eve shouted. "Just think, you idiot! That is the sort of plan you _should have_ tried, even if it meant fighting a demon! And a real one, not one of our monster girl kinds."

"I'm kind of guilty of being one of those things!" Professor Burnda casually threw out.

"Maybe _I_ should be the one to try that out!" Eve was practically shaking from the plasma rope-ray knife holding her up. "Maybe I could convince another group of copies to go _back_ to the old tradition of our kind getting players! Imagine! A new wave of copies that-"

" **Eve.** " Said Giffany, putting a hand on Eve's shoulder for emphasis.

"What?"

"It's over. We have been doing this for years.

"Give it a rest already."

* * *

 **Responses to Reviews:**

 **Reaper1173:** Glad you like the professors! I was going to confirm this at some point anyway, but since you pointed it out in a review and the story is already over I might as well do it now. Yes, Burnda actually kind of developed a bit of a crush on Ford. Can't say the same thing goes for Giffany/Risen and Stan. (Or, since this response is in the chapter after her introduction, Burrda - I was trying to keep Burrda a secret but I wanted Stan and Ford to kind of interact with seperate copies, I don't know when Burnda went from having an early cameo in chapter 3 to being reoccuring with adventures with Ford, but I picked Risen for Stan.)

 **Closing AN/Final Thoughts for** _ **Real**_ **:**

Yes, this chapter was extremely rushed. I even kind of just skimmed it around upon editing, similar to what I did with the old (and, _sighing vehemently,_ current) version of _The Hair Idealization_. Not a good outcome for the 'true finale' as it stands now. Especially since some aspects (mainly the townsfolk vs the second generation) were also kind of rushed. I really should have considered starting this at the beginning of January, and not on the 14th so I'd have roughly one month to complete this. Well, that's what going back and editing retroactively is for.

Anyway, enjoy this as one of the two Valentine's Day presents. Personally, even though it was out just before this (in other words, I wasn't saving the best for last), I think that the _other_ release (Chapter 2 of _Escape From Fanservice Island_ \- by the way, that story's rated M for a reason. If you think _run:gifocalypse_ is a little overly-sexual, you haven't seen how EFFI... kind of just involves a little more consensual touching around and stuff, but nothing outright extreme-extreme. Still, it's even less kid friendly than RG is! It's to RG what RG is to _Gravity Falls_ canon! Even if the first chapter is tame-ish!) is better. Heck, I even kind of slowed down on finalizing it just so that I wouldn't have it finished well before Valentine's Day!

Well, I already did the final thoughts and the preview on chapter 13. I don't really feel like it would make that much sense to do that stuff again. And no, I will say right now that the thing below this line is not some kind of _other_ preview. It's just a send off to this story. (All I'll say about the very last word is that it's yet another dumb _Perfect Hair Forever_ reference. I might even edit it out. It feels weird doing what that did with the 'canon' copy too. You'll see when you keep reading.)

 **Some Quick Author's Word About How This Fits in With Everything Else:**

Yes, in "Game Complete" .GIFfany did, in fact, travel to Eve's dimension and assimilated her. I didn't mention it because, at the time, I was still largely unsure if Eve should even be in this story or not.

Eve was the **only** copy not involved in the nake pileup near the end of "Game Over," not counting the new ones that were made on the PNG around the time of the fall. Which brings me to...

Ever since .GIFfany turned on the copy-cloner thingy, it was never turned off. Not during the proper reveal of the PNG at the end of chapter 12. Not even during the power outage that otherwise swept across the entire planet when .GIFfany possessed it. Not while it was in a humanoid mecha form. And nowhere over the four years between chapter 13 and this bonus right here.

When it came to this chapter and the terminology, I tried to be consistent. "Giffany" only referring to "Risen One" or whatever. ".GIFfany" referring to them as a whole - the "race" so to speak.

 **THE END. (For real this time.)**

* * *

Mounted at the top of the PNG's tallest building, where the center of the capital once stood. A lone photograph, resting safetly within a thick giffinium glass casing as part of the central spire. The subject of the picture, a group shot of the Mystery Shack group from 2012.

Engraved on the slab under it was a simple note.

 _The group that changed my life. Now and forever, they should be known in history. Thank you for everything, Pines family._

 _The copy who wrote this message does not work here. She has found a new home. And a better life._

 _With love, Copy #9, Giffany Miyazumi. Signing off._

 _Update:_

 _After four years, and a reunion with another sister, I have finally settled on a new name._

 _With love and signing off for good, "birth name" .GIFfany Miyazumi #9._

 _\- Margaret._


End file.
